Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Encouraging Stories

During our last day of door to door work in Waterford, Heidi and I paired up, and the Lord led us to two doors in particular. After about five doors we came to the home of a man named Patrick. We told him that we had distributed magazines a few days earlier and asked if he had received it and had a chance to look at it. He looked at us intently, smiled and said “Yes, it was brilliant!” His response was such a contrast to many of the responses we had heard earlier that day.

He then asked us if we would like to come in. Upon entering his home Heidi and I quickly learned that Patrick was a widower and had lost his wife to cancer nearly 4 years ago. He then shared with us that after reading the magazine he was inspired to go through some of his wife’s clothes and donate them to charity. He was really struggling with his decision and kept asking us if we thought he’d made the right decision.

He then continued to share about his wife and how hard it had been the last few years without her. We could see how broken this man was and Heidi and I really wanted to present him with a message of hope. We were able to share the Gospel with Patrick. He asked us questions, and we sat and talked with him for nearly an hour. He was really open to what we had to say, and we could tell that he really enjoyed the company. We left Patrick with words of hope, as well as the New Testament. Upon leaving he gave each of us a hug.

Please continue to pray for Patrick and his salvation. He is such a sweet man who has been struggling for nearly four years after the passing of his wife.

Shortly after our encounter with Patrick the Lord brought us to the home of a young man named Ronnie. He is a student preparing to take his leaving exams. We asked him some questions, and he was really open to talking with us. He shared with us that he didn’t really know where he stood when it came to religion or a relationship with Christ. He had heard the Gospel a few different times in various stages of his life. He also shared with us that he and his friends had been talking about Jesus and had watched the Passion of the Christ just a few weeks previously. He was a very polite, intelligent man. He listened to what we had to say and kept asking us some really hard questions. For nearly two hours we stood there talking to him, we were able to answer his questions with answers straight from the Bible. You could tell the longer we talked with him the more open he was becoming to what we were saying. We could just see that God was working on his heart.

We left Ronnie with a copy of the New Testament, and hopefully some answers. Pray for Ronnie and his salvation. You can see that he is genuinely interested in finding truth.