Category: Missions

…and look what happens.

Now whichever anti-Christian group uses this as ammunition on the war on Christmas…

…at least communist China and other athiestic countries still like Christmas…

…but at least America isn’t guilty of this explicit abuse of Christmas!

A few hours later, we’re home. Our flights all went well until [surprise!] America West had problems coming from Phoenix to Memphis. Evidently, our plane was overweight and because of weather conditions or something like that, could not hold enough fuel to get us all the way from Phoenix to Memphis. So, a refueling stop in Kansas was added. When we landed in Kansas, something happened to the nose gear…and the plane needed repairs. And since the gates were all full of parked planes at nearly 11 pm, they gave us stairs…and we had to walk out onto the tarmac and into the terminal and wait for a half hour for repairs before arriving in Memphis a little after 1:15 this morning.

All things considered, the trip really did go well. We all made it back…no plane crashes or any nasty little tricks like that…and we get to sleep in our own beds. Now if somebody could just do something about the heat out here…

It is Tuesday night, and we’re packing up to leave tomorrow morning. The last two days were not our most productive ever. I had something akin to the flu on Sunday and Monday, and missed the morning’s work. Today, it rained very hard, and we got a very few doors knocked between showers, and half of a suburb letterboxed during the rainstorm. That probably wasn’t smart, but we’re on our way home.

See you in a couple of days!

Group picture from Paratutu our first Saturday here.

Thursday and Friday were two more days of doorknocking and letterboxing. On Thursday, Angie and I had our study with a lady named Robin. The study went well and there is a return appointment set up with her for the locals to take care of.

Friday was a bit slower of a day. The group I was with had no positive responses, basically. The best conversation that I had all day was with a Jehovah’s Witness who shared some great revelations with me, including, but not limited to:

on the day of Christ’s appearing, He will be invisible. I asked, “So you’re telling me that He won’t appear on the day of His appearing?”

I asked why she uses the JW New World Translation. She explained to me that the god of the present age infiltrated the other translations. So I asked why I shouldn’t believe the same thing happened to hers. She explained that God has (and this is a direct quote) special slaves whom He tells His word to that make sure their translation is accurate. Interesting, since the NWT has not been around for their entire history. Sometime, read what they’ve done with John 8 and Christ’s claim of being “I am” over the years.

Our afternoon Bible study cancelled on us to finish off the day. So, we’re all glad that Saturday is here and we have a day to regroup before going out for our last two days of doorknocking. We’ve put out nearly 20,000 free book offers and 4,000 Gospel Minutes articles now, along with various other studies. Every day when we check the mail we have several of those book offers returned, so it has been neat to watch that work.

For the day off: dinner with our host family and maybe horseback riding or dam dropping.

Today we spent most of the day letterboxing, as the weather was cold and windy. Fortunately, northern winds are supposed to come and bring us warm air tomorrow. I just felt like Leeper giving you the weather report there. One thing is really neat about the climate down here. The mountain is so tall and stands out so much against the hills around it, that cloud systems actually back up against one side of it, and you can sort of see the weather as it spills over the mountain toward Taranaki.

Nothing much interesting happened today. We letterboxed quite a bit and got several more responses back in the mail. Our total of free book offers is somewhere above 15,000 distributed. We’ve sent out 4,000ish Gospel Minutes and door knocked more than 1,500 doors. So, I’m tired.

Today was yet another day of door knocking and letterboxing. Here’s some more from Monday:

Talked with an athiest fellow for about 20 minutes who had four children. His main reason for athiesm was suffering of mankind. To his credit, he sends his kids to Sunday School because He wants them to grow up and have a choice when it comes to spirituality.

Was yelled at through a window by a person screaming “Go away! God is dead!”

Talked to an 18 year-old mother who wants to know for sure if there is a God so she can raise her daughter.

Today, we talked to a guy for about an hour who describes himself as still having a small spark of spiritual interest, believing that there is probably a God. He feels distant from him; as he put it, when he prays, it is like talking to Santa Claus. He likes a lot of Christianity’s ideals, but knows how hard they are to implement in life as we know it. He also doesn’t understand how Christians can eat meat, because of the cruelty of how animals are slaughtered. He knows that scripture teaches it, but said, “I just can’t see Jesus eating meat.”

Another fellow wasn’t very interested in Bible study because his family was into translating Bibles. In the mid 1800s, that is.

Well, I think that’s all the fun for now. Tomorrow’s Wednesday–Kevin Moore and family are coming, and we’ve got class to teach.