Westlake Outreach with the Seed Sowers

It was September 24th; we had planned an outreach to the Westlake Mall in Seattle. dArrell would be leading us in a time a prayer, at his church (River Of Life Fellowship, in Kent), and we would go from there to Seattle to begin witnessing to people at around 12:30. There is nothing like making big plans to force you to your knees. Daniel, my son was praying for us. I asked several of my friends to pray for us. And as always, my wife sent me off with a prayer.

Prayer went longer than expected, but that was a good thing. Traffic was snarly the whole way to Seattle, but God is always in control, so there was no rush. Earlier, God had favor on me, to help me find my way to the church in Kent. If you know me, you know I am terrible at navigation.

We were supposed to be in little groups of three or four and stay together. When I made it downtown, I realized that the "goings on" that had been talked about was an anti-war rally. It so happened that nationwide, there were protests going on. As I walked toward the Westlake Mall, I walked right through the middle of the rally, and handed people "A Gift For You, Money Inside" Gospel tracts. They tried to hand me their leaflets, but I refused, and told them, "Mine is better, look and you'll see."

When I found the gal who was to be my witnessing partner, she was talking with a street cleaner guy and going through the commandments with him. He was quiet as a mouse, but he was listening. When another street cleaner guy came up, who looked to be his supervisor, the young man seemed to squirm. From that time, until the end of the day, the tandem witnessing scheme was out the window. Not intentionally, it just worked out that way.

By the end of the day, I had handed out 150 Million Dollar Bills and maybe 50 pressed pennies with the Ten Commandments on them. I spoke with probably about 50 people one-to-one. I didn't realize how physically and psychologically taxing it was to witness to that many people.

There were several standout encounters, among them was having conversations several homeless young men and women. I prayed with one young lady that she would be able to return to her son Andrew in Florida. I was able to actually speak the entire Gospel message to many people, although it seemed that the vast majority of people just ignored me. I gave out Pocket Gospels to people that seemed interested.

Standout encounter one was when I had given a Million Dollar Bill to an large, older man and began to witness to him. The first thing he did was question me, "Which Jesus are you talking about?" I said, "the one in the Bible." He said "A lot of people make that claim..." Then, he began to get in my face and said, "You Christians ought to be *doing*, not out here preaching to people. That is what is wrong with you Christian!" I said softly, "your right, I'm all for that. In fact, I had the opportunity to buy a couple of the homeless guys lunch earlier, and our church is sending a team to the Hurricane Katrina relief effort." Immediately, his countenance changed, and he let me proceed to share the Gospel with him.

Another interesting, yet unfruitful encounter, was when I talked with a couple of late middle aged, Caucasian women who were Buddhists. They told me that the world will be much better off when all religions unite. I told them that their statement was predicted in the Bible, and that the one world religion will be lead by the anti-Christ. I told them that I didn't plan on being here during that time, because the Bible also predicted an event called the rapture, in which all true Christians will be snatched from the face of the earth. They said, "oh yeah, that is because of your wrong thinking." As we parted, the one lady was nice enough to reach out and shake my hand.

God bless...