Shalom, everyone! Though the summer break is fast approaching, we still look forward to ground breaking results as we continue to plant curiosity and hope in people’s minds and hearts. Wouldn’t it be great to one day to be breaking bread with some of these same people? God showers His love and blessings on the people we find on our way and that keeps our testimony to these people fruitful. We had 2 teams this past Monday night: Mark and Danielle and Catherine and myself (Hugues). We wanted to finish that wonderful building where we were blessed, these past few weeks, by such a great amount of bibles distributed as well as great conversations.
As usual, right from the start someone was there to let us in. And as has been the usual case for May and June, many were not home. It took Catherine and me about 25 minutes to do our last two floors. However, that was not without success since we gave out 4 sets! Among those who received a set was an elderly woman who had a very strong tremor. She could barely walk but she opened her door, gladly took the set, and thanked us. While we were introducing the Scriptures to one lady, her next door neighbor (where we initially got no answer) opened his door, too. So we gave the Scriptures to 2 different people at the same time!
Imagine being on the mount where Yeshua divided the bread for the feeding of thousands… all at the same time… we now had a small taste of that! Since Catherine and I had almost finished 30 minutes ahead of time, she said it would be great if we could have the blessing of a longer discussion at the door. The prayer request was quickly answered at our last knock of the night. We met a lady in her early 60’s who disagreed with our giving out the New Testaments, and she spent some time sincerely expressing her point of view. Because she was willing to talk about it, we ended up having a 15 minute discussion. She said she couldn’t even think about God coming to earth like a man. She was shaking her head as if that would be total blasphemy. Catherine told her that it’s not because a majority of religious leaders don’t believe it, that it makes it untrue, since most of God’s prophets were killed by religious leaders.
Catherine also shared how the Word of God changed her whole life and how great God is when we trust Him. We also pointed out some messianic prophecies here and there. The woman listened but did not want to read any passages. We pray that God will keep us reaching out to people even like this, that compassion and a longing to see God’s glory realized in their lives would be our true motivation.
At the very first door, a lady in her seventies opened up and readily accepted both the Tanach and the Brit Chadasha. She was happy to speak with us, and said she had once lived in Israel. Then she told us that God had given her a dream to help her believe. In that dream she was facing a colorful tree. She told us she spoke to the tree and realized that it was the tree of life. The tree didn’t talk, but had her look in a corner where there was a huge ladder. She asked to the ladder: Do you believe in God? And as if to answer, the ladder swayed right to left, meaning yes. While talking about the New Covenant, she herself mentioned Jesus, but sadly she said that she doesn’t believe in His resurrection because she thinks that He never really died. We told her how we’ve been blessed with the Scriptures and encouraged her to read them.
Let us never bark up the wrong tree when looking for the right answers. God’s Word alone will never stump us in gaining truth.
Hugues