Hello fellow humans, or other entities that can read. Or can’t read and just clicked on the post. I don’t judge, because God is the judge. It’s that time of the week again.
We did evangelization at the mall again because one of my teammates wanted to check on someone he had met before. He wasn’t there so maybe we will be back. This time our other squad leader was with us and I was paired with him. We had about a half and hour conversation with an older couple from Israel. They were pretty easy to approach because they were buying a winter coat in Thailand and I wanted to see what was up with that. They didn’t want to talk about religion too much, and I don’t blame them given that area of the world. However the squad leader did a really good job keeping the conversation going and actually got their Facebook out of it. He was very kind to them and I learned a lot from that encounter about keeping the conversation going even if the interest in the Jesus talk is not very high. Also shout out to the girls on our team who saw us but didn’t interfere and prayed because four people would’ve been too much. Hopefully seeds were planted. I’m also not as opposed to going to Israel in the future as I once was after talking to them. In terms of prayer requests, their son is heading to the military soon, so prayers for their safety would be pretty cool.
We climbed up a waterfall as a team, that was pretty fun.
We also started watching The Chosen as a group. I really like it generally, but I’ll admit they made one change that I didn’t like. They just made Matthew “Matthew” without the name change. The name change is super cool because he went from being a tax collector hated by everyone to “The Gift of God”. Luke and Mark actually call him Levi initially and Matthew calls himself Matthew in his Gospel, and I think that’s awesome.
We found out more information on our ministry in Malaysia. Our entire squad will be together, along with another squad. The other squad has been on the field for longer, but we are supposed to mentor them a little because we are older. We could certainly help answer questions about the college time of life, but I’m sure we will have questions about being on the field for longer.
We will be teaching English to refugees, so that’s gonna be cool. In particular, each of us will be honing in on one student to fully disciple, which is why they want a lot of racers there. Between the sexual exploitation victims in Thailand and the refugees in Malaysia, we are really hitting on the groups that need help.
We will also be helping facilitate worship services. The pastor will also be providing weekly music lessons to us with keyboard, guitar, drums or base. Guitar would be pretty neat to learn, but also the drums so I can continue to utilize my God-given precision of a sledgehammer.
The girls really enjoyed the friendship bracelets I made for them and that made me happy.
Hopefully this blog made you happy too. If not, pray to God for happiness. He’s good at providing it as a component of his whole shebang.
As you know, I work in sales and my boss has said something often that I’ve learned the hard way. He says that people don’t care unless they know that you care. Of course I’m calling to sell them insurance so it’s a completely different experience and to me calling and being nice and having small talk and being friendly and funny Shows that I care but that’s not always the case. I think active listening is really important because I do feel and hear that tone change when we hit on something that they care about like if they have a collector car and we talk about that and they’ll normally go on and on or if they mention their kids or something like that so When you’re out with these people at the mall and maybe you’re struggling to connect because they’re not interested in prayer or Jesus perhaps use some observation like the winter coat in Thailand and active listening and try to make a connection on something they care about before you talk about what you care about. I don’t know. Maybe that’ll help.