Gardening/Neighboring and the Jehovah’s Witness Evangelists

As I’ve written about before, we try to spend a good amount of time outside.  As the weather has been spectacular lately, we’ve been outside even more.

Our front lawn has been in really rough shape.  So I’ve been trying every trick in the book to bring it back to life.  I finally pulled out the trump card and decided to patch the really bad spots with some sod.

Bob next door took me to pick up the sod in his truck.  We had a great conversation about the history of his families faith.  Bob grew up Mormon and his wife was Methodist.  As has become all too common, both of them left their faith early on as adults and never ventured back.  However, recently, Bob has reignited his desire to learn about God and has been doing some Bible study.  We talked a lot about that and about his desire for his wife to join him in that journey.

We parked in the front and Bob let me use his truck all day to unload the sod.  As we pulled up 3 women in bright neon colored dresses were knocking at my door.  I greeted them and they proceeded to hand me their JW.org booklet and tell me about something they had been learning lately.  I said goodbye to Bob and they said they needed to move on their way.

So I began what was to become a full 8 hour day in the yard.  About an hour passed and the 3 women came back.  I asked them how their door knocking campaign had been going and they stopped to talk about it.  I asked them how they became part of the Jehovahs Witness Church, and one of them elected to leave, but the other 2 stopped to tell me their story.  I continued on asking questions about their life, and primarily their faith and we talked for an hour an a half until someone came to pick them up.

During that time, we had a fascinating conversation about Jesus (who they believe is “A god”  emphasis on “A”, and a “spirit person”).  I had to repent for getting verbally angry with them when they talked about Jesus that way.  I think my exact words were, “that’s such blasphemy!” in not the nicest of tones I’m sure… I realized though, that its not really their fault that they have been taught this heresy, but I was sharply aimed to correct it.

I remember my mother telling me when I was young that it was my responsibility to always be prepared to give an answer when people ask about your faith.  There are few times in my life when the need for this seemed as real as it did in this moment.

Our fascinating conversation continued as the Lord gave me more patience and grace than I had earlier.  When it was time for them to go, I invited them to come back.  They plan to come back around this Friday morning.

I appreciate your prayers for that conversation and others we are having in the neighborhood.  Your partnership in prayer to the Lord means the world to me and is powerfully effective.