I asked the mom if she had a religious background. She said yes, catholic. And I told her the back of the million dollar bill asks an important question. Will you go to heaven when you die. I asked if she could name any of the 10 commandments. She said she couldn’t think of any. I told her I’m sure she could remember at least one. (I tried to get her motivated to talk with me). She said she couldn’t, and she really didn’t want to talk to me about religious things. It’s a personal thing for her.
I shared we are out today talking with people, because we know its important to make sure we know where we are going when we die. She was adamantly in her attitude, not really nice, and kind of non responsive (I could tell she did not want to talk). She wasn’t rude or mean, just in a weird way just not wanting to talk. Her preteen daughter was sitting with her and so, I tried to encourage her to read the back of the million dollar bill because its important. I felt like that was a swing and a miss. At least they had the tract, that is the great thing about it. The gospel does the work it is meant to do, by the power of God. So when they read it, hopefully what I was trying to say, would make sense after she read the tract.
We went back to our meeting spot with the group and attempted to give out a few other tracts. Some college age guys took some from me, a few younger girls, and a couple who were walking by.
When the couple was approaching, I wanted to call him a bit closer to us, and then my nephew reached out and offered the Million dollar bill tract. The lady nicely asked him what it was. He looked at me for a second and wasnt sure what to say or do, so he quickly flipped it over and showed her the text on the back. And read he it right out to her “the million dollar question: Will you go to heaven when you die?” She said yes and then they and I talked a minute.
She said her and her husband go to a church down the road from here [so they are locals] and that they know people at YWAM. We talked for about 10 minutes. We shared with them that we are on vacation and are out with a local couple who witness there to the locals and those who come off of the cruise lines. We told them how we share the gospel and etc. It was a nice conversation.
While we were with the others when witnessing (safety first), at one point a creepy older homeless guy (white but very tan, with long blond dreadlocks) came our way. We decided to try to talk to him briefly, to at least hand a tract, he was just not interested in talking. Then I spoke to another native Hawaiian lady who also appeared homeless and had a local friend with her. Most of the people there are Hawaiian natives, white, or tourists.
Later on we packed up and headed back to meet up with the rest of our family. I’m sure we were out for about 3 hours and that was a pretty long time for my parents’ first street “outing.” And I was glad to hear that my mom had been handing out tracts in the walkway in front of the church. After we got back to the resort, she told me she had the hardest people come past her when the other lady and I had shortly walked down the boardwalk.
She said she handed out to a few people as they were walking by and they took the tract and didn’t stop, others turned their face and snubbed her or would not only refuse the tract, (either thinking it was cult material or because they were anti-Christian), but they would also speak rudely to her or say “No” in a very mean way. She tried to hand a large 100 dollar bill to a mother of a couple young children who were walking by, offering it as “play money” and the mother grabbed her little children by the arm and dragged them away as she firmly said in a rude and aggressively way “NO!” Her kids didn’t understand and she treated her children badly because of her (the mom’s) behavior.
My mom told the believer she was teamed up with at the moment that she couldn’t understand how the mother would react that way since the kids can’t even read. When she told me, I mentioned that there could be many reasons; It could be due to a situation in her life where she is mad at God right now, had a pushy family member or someone else she knows try to get her to church, or she had a bad experience with someone who professed to be a Christian and ended up causing her to walk away from spiritual things. No one knows but God, and at least my mom tried. She did her part to share the gospel, even after several people treated her like that.
After we returned home from Hawaii the ones who lived there and joined up with us to share the gospel, had went back to see if the Egyptian couple was still there, so they could talk to them, and encourage them. They were there, and they had a great conversation! The very next day they ran into that couple in a local store and had mentioned to the witnessing couple that they were greatly encouraged by all of us to share the gospel. That was an encouragement to us because we’ve found it’s rare to get a YWAM’er interested in sharing the gospel. I look forward to hearing about their witnessing encounters from this outing too.
