the experience was an eye opener

On Friday night, March 22nd, I went to downtown Minneapolis to see if I could help out with Jesus Freaks.  I was a little apprehensive, but I couldn't come up with any good excuses not to give it a try.

I teamed up with Mike and Phil, so I got to watch the old pros in action.  They are fearless!  They don't hesitate to walk into a bus stop full of people and try to engage as many people as possible. 

At one bus stop a woman started yelling at Mike, telling him that she was sick of Christians trying to force their religion on people, and she stormed away.  Mike wasn't detoured and he followed her and kept trying to engage her.  After a few more minutes of her yelling at Mike, she finally let down her defenses and her story came out.

She claimed to be a bisexual and felt shunned by the church.  She was raised by a mother that was a hypocritical Christian that drank too much and was abusive.  Sadly, the woman didn't come to Christ, but a seed was sown!

Another instance was when a group of six or seven black teenagers were walking toward us and Phil just walked right into the center of them and tried to engage them.  He got them to take some gospel tracks.  Phil surprised me when he said his new focus was going to be on engaging white middle class types.  At first thought, I didn't think that seemed to be such a big goal, but as the night wore on I came to understand what he meant.  When we approached blacks or Hispanics, they were usually willingly to take a gospel tract and give at least a little bit of time to us, but surprisingly the reaction from whites was completely different.  Generally, the whites wouldn't make eye contact.  If they even acknowledged you were trying to hand them something, they wouldn't take it.  Most wouldn't respond to a question, and those that did were usually very short with a "Not interested" type of response.  Phil has his work cut out for him!         

My own personal experience was that when Mike or Phil engaged a group, there were always a couple of people floating around the edge trying to find out what was going on.  I'd approach that type of person.  One on one seemed pretty easy, and if I ran into a stumbling block, I had Mike or Phil bail me out.  I can't claim any great success stories, but one woman said she'd find a Sunday school for kids, and another woman took a bible and asked us to pray for her.

Finally, the experience was an eye opener.  I have spent some time downtown, but never when I was focusing so much on other people.  I was surprised how many broken people are just hanging around downtown.  They were plenty of drunk homeless men, but also young women dressed for male attention trying to get into the nightclubs, the successful that don't need anything, and the angry bisexual waiting for a bus and a Savior.
 
Al