Evangelism

Today, after lunch and work duties, Emma taught a short lesson on evangelism, and prepared our hearts to go out into the city and actually do some evangelism.

This was the first time that we really got a chance to practice what we learned. This opportunity was met with mixed reactions. Half of us were scared to go out into the city and just walk up to people and talk to them about Jesus. The other half were tired from a long day. (I was both.)

We paired off into teams and jumped into taxis and went off into the city. During intercession, earlier in the day, we prayed for the evangelism that we were going to do. I had the Israelites leaving Egypt on my mind at the time so I prayed that God would go before us by a cloud during the day and by a pillar of fire during the night. As I looked out of the window of our taxi, I saw that the whole city was covered by a giant cloud. It was overcast, and it was so thick that it snowed on us a bit. (Sorry guys! Next time I'll ask God to lead us by pizza or something. :-p ) I thought that was a good sign. No matter where we walked, God was going to be with us.

I was teamed up with Ovi, and when we got out of the cab in downtown Cluj, we started walking. I didn't really know where we should walk, so we just kept walking. We passed by a homeless guy. I asked Ovi if we should start with him. He told me that we probably shouldn't. It can be dangerous to approach shady characters like that. I was a bit shocked. In Santa Barbara, you can talk to homeless guys if you want to. I used to do it with Adorn (the Friday night college ministry at my church). Once a month we'd go out and pray for and hang out with the homeless guys. I was a bit discouraged that this guy wasn't going to get prayed for, but I did want to be safe. We kept walking.

Then Ovi saw a guy selling some wooden things. He went up and started talking to him. It was all in Romanian, so I couldn't really understand what they were talking about. When we left, I asked Ovi if he talked to him about Jesus. Nope. He talked with him about his family, and the wooden things he was selling, and he found out that it takes about 30 minutes to hand carve each thing, and Ovi was nice enough to buy one from him for 5 lei. I was disappointed again, and felt like we missed another opportunity. Ovi told me he thought about it, but he didn't want to force Jesus down anyone's throat. I agree that we shouldn't do that, but I was still disappointed.

We kept walking, and I kept asking God to open up opportunities for us, or to lead us down some random side street, or to lead us into some random shop. I didn't really hear anything, so we kept walking straight. We came up to the ice skating rink, and I thought we should go and pray for someone there. I didn't say anything though. Now I was disappointed in myself.

I reasoned in my mind that we couldn't just go out onto the ice and pray for the skaters. They wouldn't stand still for long enough for us to say anything. I thought that maybe we were supposed to talk to someone standing next to the rink, but as I looked over at the people that were around the area, I didn't really see anyone that I felt called to like the homeless guy. We kept walking. :-/

When we got about thirty minutes away from our starting point we turned around and headed back. We had an hour and I didn't want to be irresponsible, and show up late. On the way back I kept praying that God would lead us, and give us one last chance to talk to someone, but it didn't happen. We get all the way to where we started and we waited for the other teams to show up.

Argh! I was ready to part the Red Sea! I was ready to preach the sermon on the mount! And all I did was shy away from all the people that we passed.

One of the staff came back and asked me how it went. I was so discouraged by everything, but for some reason I didn't tell her that. Instead my response was, "I don't know how it went. I mean, I know how I thought it went, but I don't know how it went overall. Maybe from God's perspective it was a huge success to have a couple guys walking around praying and carrying a Bible." She nodded and as the othe teams approached, and asked them how it went. They talked and eventually we walked over to a restaurant to eat and debrief. None of the other teams found as much discouragement as I did. They were all hugely encouraged and blessed by their experiences.

One of the teams: Cristina and "Timmy" (we call her Timmy, but her real name is Cristina) went out and talked to a girl. "Hi, my name is Cristina. What's yours?" "Cristina." "Wait what??" Timmy chimes in, "My name is Cristina too!" Hahaha, Cristina and Cristina went out and found Cristina. Nice one, God. They spent some time talking to her about God and got to know her pretty well. It was a very nice time. (If Cristina puts the full story on her blog, I'll link to it.)

Another team went out and met a lady with a dog. The dog didn't have a leash and was running all over. Ishti was talking to the lady in Romanian, and Austin didn't speak Romanian so he was watching this dog run around. As Ishti was talking to this lady, he asked if he could pray for her. She wanted to, but not if her dog was going to run away. While they were talking about this in Romanian, Austin prays for the dog to come back. It's a half a block down the road, and it stops in its tracks and turns around and runs toward the lady and sits at her feet. Ishti prays for the lady, and the dog that was once hyperactive is now sitting patiently. Haha, God. Nice again.

Another team talks about how they found this homeless guy and they talked with him and prayed with him and even got him to do some praying. It was the same guy that I had seen earlier!

Another team talked about how they met a guy that carved his own wooden utensils. It was the same guy that we had met earlier! They actually did talk to him about Jesus, and were able to tell him that God loves him and they prayed for him.


Lord, I apologize for my meekness, but I thank you and praise Your name for accomplishing Your work anyways. You wanted to speak into each of these people's lives and just because I didn't do it, didn't mean that it wasn't going to get done. That actually encourages me. I'm not so full of myself that I need to be the person in the center of what God is doing. I'm just happy that those people got a taste of Jesus. It was a good day.