LTW Update: Boulder Team

On Valentine's Day a group of four from my church spent an hour on the Pearl Street Mall in Boulder, wandering up and down passing out gospel tracts and listening to the street musicians. My friend and I talked first to a backslidden Mormon named Tad who was hanging out with homeless people but not truly homeless himself since his Mormon family "took care of him". He enjoyed our conversation about his failing to keep God's commands (he laughed because he was smoking and drinking alcohol) and knew he would be in trouble on judgment day, but he didn't think he had to repent and trust Jesus to save him. I encouraged him to get to know the real Jesus of the Bible and surrender his life to Him. Then we talked to Larry, a man employed to wave a sign around who was happy to have someone to talk to ("waving a sign gets boring"). He believes in "Lord Krishna" and did learn Bible stories in Sunday School but as an adult he discovered the Bible was not to be trusted since errors crept in after years of copying the manuscripts. "Lord Jesus" had good things to say, as did "Lord Buddha" and others. We talked for at least 15 minutes and just once seemed to get through to him - when I gave the analogy of standing before a just judge when he was guilty of a serious crime, and asking the judge to be merciful and forgive him just because he asked for forgiveness. He agreed a good judge would not let him go without carrying out justice and pronouncing a punishment. He looked a little startled when I told him, "Jesus paid your fine. He died in your place to save you." When we left he thanked us for the interesting conversation - a bright spot in his day.