Here is the report from Steven on the outreaches in Tampa
Hello brothers and sisters in Christ, and friends!
Greetings from one of your favorite fisherman and the main speaker at this exciting program here that we call ‘Follow the Fisherman’ – welcome. I’m glad you could join us today. I’m your friendly fisherman leader here, Steven 🙂 And, this little regular program is where we share stories of our conversations with people about eternity – the most important subject in this life and in eternity is where we are going when we die. Many people think about – but they typically only talk about it with their closest of friends – unless someone brings it up 😀
So, this little episode is catching you up from our fishing adventures in Tampa – for the starting of the MLB season.
What was amazing about this evangelism adventure is that when we looked at the calendar in the first several days of April, we quickly realized that we were already booked the weekend of the opening weekend, and the 2nd weekend of homegames (2 weeks later) also seemed completely booked… until 4 days before we could go. God works in mysterious ways doesn’t He? Thank you to all of you who prayed for us – that helped a lot!
Okay, so we found out like on a Tuesday that we could go and started getting ready for a Saturday evening/Sunday mid-afternoon evangelism trip. And we invited several friends who all really wanted to go, but the spiritual warfare and last-minute invite didn’t give them enough time to be able to get past the barriers they came across. So, it was just the four of us with their and others prayers! 🙂 It was a blessed weekend!
So, we drove mid-afternoon and got to the baseball stadium in time to pass out several hundred tracts. Our favorite evangelism events are those where we can talk with people, but most of the people either didn’t want the tract or wanted the tract and wanted to get to the game – so 🙂 not much Saturday.
Paul and I set up on a corner where people flowed by and across the street. Because of our friendliness with the people – whether they took our tract or not, the officer across the street grew to like us and interacted here and there. We always like that 🙂
Dad and Madre were at a busier thorough-fair and were able to pass out a lot of tracts to those who wanted them. When we pass out tracts, we typically will say something like ‘It’s a gospel tract’ or ‘It’s about Heaven – you can have one if you want’. Most of the people who take a tract after hearing that it’s because they really want one and they seem to value it more.
Saturday evening, we got back to our hotel, got some sleep, woke up – had some brief Bible discussion and headed to the stadium around noon. This time, Paul and I traveled all the way around the stadium to see if we could find a better corner with more people to interact with, and we did – sort of. We found that if we split up within view, we could reach more people – so we did. Paul got to pass out tracts and built a little friendly conversation with the officer on his corner – they talked about life and eternity. Good conversations. I was passing out tracts and then one young man with earbuds in his ears stopped and looked at the tract and asked what it was. I explained that it talked about eternity and where we go when we die. That really caught his attention and we talked for the next 30-45 minutes. His name is Munir. He was raised by Muslim parents, is now a Christian and he is growing in following Christ. What changed his life was a car accident that almost killed him – damaged his brain, from which he’s recovered mostly. We talked about his family, how Jesus and the God of the Bible are different from what Islam says, etc. I told him about Mark A. Gabriel’s books ‘Islam and Terrorism’ and ‘Jesus and Mohammad’ and told him some of Mr. Gabriel’s testimony. (note: Mark A. Gabriel is his pen name, not his real name).
After Munir and I had talked a little while, he wanted to stick around, so I said that he could join me in passing out tracts – and he did. So, I showed him what I was doing – how I was engaging with people, and how to respond when they said no thank you or were rude. He helped pass out tracts to people for the last 15-20 before the game began, and the crowd thinned out. Towards the end of my conversation with Munir, the rest of my family joined me and we got to encourage him.
It was a great trip – thank you so much to all of you who prayed for us. I hope that some of you in our area or in areas near a baseball field will plan to head out to pass out tracts to those who come to watch the game. Maybe you can write it on your calendar next year 🙂
Well, this is your friendly fisherman signing off! ~ till next time, let’s keep serving Jesus and calling others to give Him their lives to follow and serve Him too. ~ a growing servant/life-slave of Jesus, SH 🙂
