Last Sunday, we again went out for evangelism as we do every Sunday. My partner and I chose to go out with Soularium (the one where you let people answer questions with pictures) and headed down towards the beach. It started out a little bit difficult. Despite our perseverance in trying to talk to people, they just kept rejecting. Yet, as some turned us away, God was preparing other to put into our paths and the two conversations we had during our time out made all of the rejections totally worth it. The first was with a young woman who was lived in the area but was in Santa Monica with some kind of artsy high school group trip (which made Soularium perfect for her!) When we asked her about pictures to describe her life, she talked mostly about the impact of the beauty of nature and how important it was to her, but also chose a picture of feet climbing up stairs and said that she was "wandering." As we went on, we continued to ask about the wandering part of her life. Was she searching? Where was she looking? She informed up that she was an athiest, so had no belief in any sort of God, yet also mentioned that she didn't feel quite content with her life and was searching for contentment in nature. We probably chatted for about 20 minutes and while our conversation wasn't destined to lead straight to the gospel as she was still in the "A-H" ** range as we would say, I hope that it did spark some interest and curiosity in her and would hopefully cause her to continue conversing with the man who accompanied her but refused the survey.
Our next conversation happened on a random side street where God placed a young couple sitting on a couple on chairs just waiting for us to come chat with them (or so it ended up). This conversation was longer (maybe close to an hour) and became much more in depth. The couple we soon found out to be dating; they had met in the marines and he was a contractor in Afghanistan while she was very close to being discharged. It's hard to recall the whole conversation, but both were very intrigued and we were all actively involved in it. One of the first questions we asked was that they each choose 3 pictures that described what they wished their life could look like. One of the pictures the woman chose was of a girl sitting alone on a church pew, and she explained that she wish she could be more religious, or spend more time with God. She thought doing so would please her family and also felt guilty that she generally only talked to God when there was a problem she needed him to fix. We continued in conversation, and the man struck me and both simple and eloquent with his answers. To the question "Pick a card that describes God" he chose on of a spoon, fork, and knife and said "he is everything you need." Later when asked about his spiritual experiences so far he chose a card that displayed many empty wine glasses and one that was half full and stated that he had tried a lot of things and was still tasting. His words fit so perfectly with the pictures that I was pretty much fascinated. After we finished our set of questions, we continued with our own pressing further to find out their background in the gospel and their actual beliefs. At the beginning, I wasn't positive they had heard the gospel as the man made mention that he tried to do good things in order to balance out the bad and achieve eternal life in Heaven. The woman expressed that eternal life was found through faith in Jesus Christ. As the conversation continued to deepen, we explained the concept of God's grace, and how they could know for sure that they would receive salvation. Though they weren't necessarily "go to church every week, read your Bible everyday Christians" we discovered by the end that actually were saved! It was awesome to be able to reassure them of their salvation and eternal life in Heaven and I was blessed and so fascinated by the conversation with them. They were also really happy about it, as they expressed somewhere in the middle that they were really happy for the opportunity to talk with us and how interesting they found the conversation as well. Of course my reenactment of the experience is nothing close to the real thing, so your probably not all giddy and excited like I was by the end. Still, it's incredible to see the people God puts in your path when you make yourself open to talking about Him.
With the staff completely gone, our actions groups have changed just a bit. Two of the girls in my room became action group leaders so our group split with two of us each joining a different group. At first I was really sad about splitting up, but after our Bible Study and hang out time tonight, I'm really happy about our new group! We had a ton of fun together, I love the girls, and we have named ourselves the Munchkins after a donut at Dunkin Donuts (lonnng story :P). Three more days of work before the weekend!
** The A-Z scale is something we use to describe the progression of people's spiritual journey,. "A-H" is either not interested at all or only minimally interested in anything religious, or just being really far from ready to hear about and put their faith in Jesus. "H-T" is kind of the middle, searching, not quite there but not super far away range and "T-Z" is the searching, almost there, just needs to hear the gospel and know for sure that its true range. In short anyway.
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