Friday Fest

     We still call it First Friday (the original name) although now the name is Friday Fest. A fairly large city near us opens its streets to partying and drinking for the first half of the night. It started out as the first Friday of each month, hence the name, but has now been extended to every Friday under the new alias of Friday Fest. On these first Friday's of each month a group of individuals from our last church and myself go out and actively engage in street evangelism. We bring along a supply of tracts provided by one of our senior participants, and spend our time passing out tracts to whomever we can and sharing the gospel with whoever will listen. This evening's outing turned out to be lacking in fruit-ful-ness since neither group (we split up, tonight was groups of 2 and 3) was provided with any seemingly meaningful conversations; but did, however, unearth some rather entertaining fruit-i-ness.
     I was one of group of two (we're both on the relatively younger end of the scale even though my partner has a well-established family of seven) and the senior group was constituted by his father and two women from the church. All of them attend the church we were at previously. Anyways, they were walking down a street. The street was completely empty, desolate, and they heard a banging noise behind them. They turned around and were greeted by the sight of lone man sitting at a table periodically slamming his fist down. They decided to approach him and found the man to be a one man  how. Dressed in -- I think they said -- khakis, a flaming red shirt, white, pointed-toe, patented-leather, boots, and a high-contrast zebra turban-like thing on his head, he kept up a very lively and interesting -- although one-sided -- conversation with them, occasionally poking the man of the group in the ribs when he told him a joke. This character proved to be a fairly touchy-feely kind of guy, energetically shaking the man's hand, hugging the ladies, and then kissing the ladies on their foreheads. He claimed to have been homosexual 25 years ago, and shortly after relaying that information became very excited and pulverized a styrofoam take-out box he was holding. When he saw a lady walking down the street, he hailed her rather impolitely, she called him by his first name, and the walked off together. Of the group that met him, one lady avoided him when they saw him across the street later on in the evening, another was amazed, and the man said that he had never seen such a weird-o in all of the five or six years he had been out on those streets witnessing every month.     Meanwhile, while accompanied by my partner, I had a similarly interesting conversation with another man out on the streets. Very early on in the conversation, I probed him to find out what he believed would save a man and get him into heaven. He claimed to have a Christian background and to have been saved on multiple occasions. He basically described salvation as the eclipsing of hardship by greater hardship. The example he used was that of a person who first had their foot amputated and then had up to their knee amputated. After that, the person was saved from the first amputation by the second, and so during his life he had been brought to salvation many times by progressively harder trials. He rejected the true gospel of belief on Jesus Christ for salvation and accompanying repentance from sin. We also learned that he had recently married his fourth wife. Although we did not smell or see liquor, we questioned whether or not all of his marbles were present and accounted for, they did not seem to be. The last tidbit of information we received before thanking him for his time and wishing him a good evening was that he had committed multiple suicides!
     Despite these very intriguing encounters, please pray that the others to whom we were able to pass out tracts to, even though we were not able to really speak with any of them, would take the time to read the tracts and that the Lord would use our efforts to bring some to Christ or at least plant seeds.

     Today I am thankful for: 1) a chance to share the gospel with those in desperate need of it even if they don't know it, 2) solid, Christian friends, 3) freedom from religious persecution so far, 4) a very heavy school load that will hone my ability to focus and time management skills prior to entering college, and 5) a bit of progress today on my scholarship applications.
     Joke of the day: What do polite prisoners say when they bump into someone?
                               "Pardon me."

Joke Credit: the 365 DAY Clean Joke book