I must admit that witnessing adds a lot of spice to life. It’s always an adventure, results never fail to surprise, it’s exciting to meet each unique sheep, and one can learn anything from advanced bus route skills to sales perfection from it. I have never had a day when I came back from witnessing unfulfilled because the Lord always does SOMETHING to make your day, and his miracles are amazing. But nevertheless, sometimes getting into the groove of witnessing can take effort and there are times when I look at the schedule of the upcoming week and see myself on 3 OR days and I wonder (my feeble mind) how I will make it. I conjure in my mind (with a little help from the demons of depression) how many blisters I will have when the week is through, how little we will get out, and how many goats horns we will have to run away from.
I had one of these days a while ago and it didn’t feel good at all. I was on OR the next day, and the next, and the next, and the next, it was time to pack my bag (which would take away from my evening waste … I mean, free time) and I wasn’t looking forward to it. I made my way to the tool cupboard, murmuring how we only had French and Croatian “mottos” and how the bag would weigh the equivalent of an overweight tomcat by the time I finished packing it. Then somehow in the back of my mind behind all the murmuring, I heard something …
“Um, Abner … Hobbs!!”
It was the Lord, yikes, he had caught me!!
“Yes Lord?” I look up at the ceiling with a fake smile worthy of a politician.
“Yes Abner, and I think you know what I mean by ‘yes’!”
I gulped inwardly, knowing I wouldn’t escape, “I’m sorry Lord …”
“Oh don’t worry Abner, everyone gets hit with stuff like that sometimes, I just wanted to tell you something that will snap you out of it.”
“Really?” I was only semi-convinced.
“Yeah, really!” the Lord seemed inspired, “Tomorrow on the way to your OR spot you’ll meet someone really sweet on the bus who will get saved.”
That sounded good, but I wanted to know how good … “is it a she?”
“Yes,” replied the Lord, “student, in her twenties, black mini-skirt.”
“Wow!” the Lord had definitely snapped me out of my poor me state now, “And all I have to do is show your love to her!?”
“Yes, now you’re talking, I knew you’d be happy about that,” the Lord said “now why don’t you add one of those gift-books to the bag and take out …”
We continued packing the bag and then I returned to my waste … I mean, FREE time. The night passed uneventfully and the next morning after the usual stumbling out of bed and towards the percolator and an inspiring devotions, I met up with my OR partner.
But somehow I had completely forgot about the conversation the night before …
“I thought we should take the bus today as we are going to be in the same area most of the day,” my OR partner said.
And so we were off, down the street, avoiding our lovely mean stray dog friends on the way to the bus stop.
“Lord, please help the bus not to be too full,” my partner prayed as we waited patiently.
The bus came, and in answer to prayer was filled with vacant seats, I found a seat close to me a plopped down next to … suddenly all the events of the evening before flooded back into my head! The Lord had been right! The cute face beside me hiding behind the book was most certainly early twenties. I stole a look at the contents of the book. Trigonometry! Ugh!! At this I felt no qualms at giving her different material to save her from the … scourge of education.
“Here, this is for you to read,” I said in broken Thai, handing her a colorful Laban-ized tract.
“Thank you,” she replied and looked over the tract curiously and then straight back at me, “what’s it about?”
“Oh, don’t worry, if you don’t want to read it I can explain it to you!”
She looked interested so I continued, happily bringing up the subjects of God’s love, salvation, endtime economics, and so on. The long bus ride seemed to pass in a flash but by the time it was time to get off she had gladly asked Jesus into her heart and given me her email, asking me to send her more reading material.
And it totally made my day! In fact the rest of the day we barely even got anything out, but I didn’t care. You see, because even if witnessing seems difficult the Lord always makes it worth it, when you witness you always win and the Lord rewards you for it in a special way, whether it’s a really sweet sheep and a deep conversation in which you are able to get them hooked on the Lord, or a miracle amount of tools, or meeting a new long-term supporter … cuz if I just sit back a relax and let the Lord do it, he always in control and time after time proves himself a worthy God.