Battle Log
Battle Log > Plymouth Team > Friday, 12 March, 2010
Friday, 12 March, 2010
Last Friday another evangelist came out with me on the Friday evening to Plymouth University for an hour which was a great encouragement (there is now 3 in our team on a regular basis, including me!) and he is really interested in learning more of the WOTM principles which is great.
He had a great conversation with a Muslim student who again brought up issues about the Koran saying Jesus didnt die on a cross etc, and hopes to meet him again to chat further. That evening I came across 17 year old lads who were cousins walking through Plymouth University that evening. They were extremly open and friendly, which is not what I first expected, and they appeared to be concerned about the state of their soul before God and so enthusiasticly took tracts and a gospel of John to read, which was greatly encouraging. It made me realise again that God is no respector of persons, were all the same in his sight in that respect, and so just if we dont think someone will want to hear the gospel because of the way they look/ dress, God often has other ideas.
I also had a very interesting conversation with a guy called Rob, who was gay. I discovered this after he said he had never lusted after a woman, but this issue was not the sticking point at all, as it so often can be. Again he was very pleasant and was not convinced about evolution anhd was intregued about creationism and what the Bibles views on the origin of life were, and again he gladly took some tracts and information to read and think about.
On the train back from Glastonbury on Tuesday, I offered a tract to a man with his headphones on, and again at first I thought he would be disinterested, but again I was very wrong! It was a real refrershing conversation with the 24yr old guy called Mike, and as he had been brought up in a Catholic school as a child, he already had some views on God and heaven/ hell. He really understood the gospel message, its amazing grace but also stark warningsa of refusing to repent and trust Christ alone for his salvation, and therefore acknowledged the implications this may have on his girlfriend about to pick him up from the station and his parents etc. He too took a gospel of John and a 'Why Christianity' tract.
On Wednesday 17th March I had the day off work, and so had arranged to meet some American students on an evangelism outreach fgrom Iowa to Plymouth, as a friend had seen them doing open air preaching in PLymouth city centre and took their contact details, and so I spent a couple of hours with them.
This included managing to speak to some x-pupils from the local secondary school I work alongside as a youth worker, and being able to start conversations with 3 lads whom I know from there, which I would not normally have been able to do in work time, which was great. They took tracts and seemed wide eyed afterwards when they understood what the gospel and Easter was all about, and after knowing about my accident I had when I was their age at 16, how short this life is incomparison to the next.
I met the guy whose email I had contacted, and it turned out there was about 12 students alltogether with this mission trip, and others from their Church in Iowa had also gone to Wales and Barcelona doing the same sort of thing. They were using WOTM tracts and 6 day creation v evolution tracts which were really good. One of the older guys started doing some open air preaching at the sundial right in the middle of the city centre, and quite a few people stopped to listen to the american accent and what was being said, including a couple of angry hecklers and a couple of policemen pacing up and down in the background. Lots of tracts were given out to people when he had finished speaking.
I was then encouraged by him and so preached as well, and the same 2 hecklers came back, one man shouting adomantly that 'God hateed religious people', and another girl who wanted a shouting contest with me saying that because she didnt believe in God it didnt apply to her. I then tried to reason with he that if I believed the sun was sguare and blue, my belief system didnt matter, but the truth is the thing that matters. I tried to reason that either space or God must be the infinite causer of all life, and that as the Universe has a beginning, God was infinite and is self existent and so then went on challenging peoples beliefs about how someone gets to heaven.
I was encouraged afterwards by a couple of Christians I knew from Plymouth walking past who stopped to listen, and also an elderly gentleman the Kyle the american was speaking with. It seemed like he had heard some of what was being said by the other preacher and myself, and he said he used to believe in God/ go to Church, but wanted to think about things again, so praying he was convicted somehow!
Was a great afternoon and a real encouragement, and hope to meet them again on Friday before they fly home on Saturday.