Curt and Janie, the table looks great! I love what you built, Curt, for the tracts and booklets. The banner does look so nice, and so do all of the books and resources displayed. No doubt, the neighborhood is going to miss you in July and be eagerly awaiting your return in August. It is really exciting that you will get to share with your church in MN all about this ministry of evangelism and apologetics! Thank you for all you do and for your testimony of pointing people to Jesus in love.
OH!! How we LOVE this ministry!!!It was a typical sweltering Texas summer day with temps in the mid 90’s. Praise the Lord for a nice breeze (AND our canopy).
Our first visitor that day was an elderly gentleman whose only interest was in a Spanish Bible. He was more than pleased to find it was ‘free’.
Our next visitor was truly an answer to prayer! Most always we have only a matter of seconds, not even minutes, to mention something about God, especially to kids who are tagging along behind their shopping-parent. Today 11 year old Leo, a vendor’s son, stopped by the table. I offered him an activity booklet on The Story of Jesus. He said, “I already have one of those”. Hmm. He’s been here before. He was alone. I asked if his parent had a booth here today. He said, “Yes”. We talked for several minutes, and he was VERY interested in what the Bible had to say. Apparently he had a couple of them at home. He left BUT came back about an hour later, and we sat and talked for over an hour about the 7 Days of Creation and various things he had heard from others, including a Catholic mom and dad and a JW grandma. We even started on the Ten Commandments as discussed in the tract Are You Good Enough To Go To Heaven? I had only dreamed about such an opportunity.
After his mom found him with us the first time, she was ‘comfortable’ with him spending time with us again. As I talked to Leo, Curt had an interesting conversation with his older ½ sister, Lizet. Lizet claimed to be a Christian and hoped to have Leo stay with her at some point. (I did mention to Leo that we would not be setting up in July but hoped we would see him in August on Jackson St.) Please pray God would bless Leo (and his sister) in a very special way, especially in their search for Truth.
We don’t display our Large Print Bible on the Table because of the cost. However, we do have a couple on hand should we see that the interest is sincere. We had such a request from an elderly lady.
Another fellow stopped by and was pleased we had the Kids’ Bible in Spanish (Nlrv-Biblica). He would be using it in a church ministry for kids. [Thank you Dwayna and Lighting the Way for the 2 cases of Kids’ Bibles!!!]
TSTC (Tex. State Tech. College) had bunches of students doing a project which required taking pictures of the many booths. Most took a picture of our booth and left. One student looked over the materials, took several tracts, took a picture and went on her way. (We must admit, the Keys for Kids banner IS quite impressive….note also the new tract holder Curt made).
Two sisters stopped by. One called herself “a floater”----she said she loves to read and is searching for truth but is NOT interested in reading her Bible. She did describe her year or two experience in a Catholic church but didn’t believe their doctrine. She has ‘floated’ in and out of various churches. We gave her several tracts on Catholicism, including the testimony of former priest R. Bennett. As the conversation progressed, we kept pointing her to Jesus Christ and the Bible. She began to speak of desiring to get into an exercise program and was thinking about yoga. I quickly gave her our 2 testimonies on ladies who had been involved in yoga and also talked about the oxymoron of ‘Christian Yoga’. I gave her yet another tract, much more involved, describing the Hindu god “Shiva”, from Anointed Ministries.
A young man stopped by, looked over the materials and took the red colored print-out on “The Occult” by Gregory Reid. The same thing happened last month. We pray that through that print out God will reveal to these two young men the reality of the evil spirits, with which they are dealing, if they indeed are dabbling in any occult practices.
As we mentioned before, the ministry is probably just a much for vendors as shoppers in the street fair. Such is the case, once again, with our new neighbor, Ida. What a sweetie. She doesn’t speak much English, so it was a great opportunity to practice our limited Spanish. She is a delightful, cheerful lady; however, we could see tears well up in her eyes when she spoke of her husband who died several years ago. At the end of the day, she gave us a little gift and we, in turn, gave her a few resources from our table for her grandkids. I was grateful to be able to give her copies of evangelistic materials in both English and in Spanish.
We won’t be on Jackson St. in July as we will be visiting our family and new granddaughter in MN. We are delighted to say, Lord willing, we’ll be doing a power-point presentation in our church there; much of which will be on this table ministry. We’ll invite everyone attending the pot-luck lunch afterward to stop by the outreach table and take a tract or two that may be of interest to them. We’re eager to hear their reactions and responses!! We’ll display one of each of the Bibles that we use as well as several selected books and will tell anyone interested in those items how to find them on-line.
We’ll be eager to get back to Jackson St. the first Saturday in August and hope to again see our young friend Leo, and maybe even Ida.
Relying on Him as “He Directs Our Paths” (Prov. 16:9),
Curt and Janie Rolf
Rio Grande Valley
