Not All Witnessing Encounters Go As Planned :-)

So, I had a building project meeting at church tonight. I decided to head to the church about an hour and a half before the meeting so I could do some witnessing at a nearby shopping center.

As I walked to the shopping center, I prayed for God's blessing upon my time on the streets.

Before arriving at the shopping center, I stopped in a liquor store. (Settle down! I just wanted to talk to the guy behind the counter.)

His name was Ruben. I waited for the customer he was serving to leave before I approached the counter. "Hey, here's a million dollars for you."

Ruben smiled and took the million dollar bill. he immediately turned it over and began to read the gospel message on the back. "Do you know what the million dollar question is?" I asked.

He raised his hand and said, "Wait. I'm reading."

So, I waited for Ruben to finish reading the tract. "So, what do you think?" I asked.

"Oh, this is not good."

"You didn't like it?"

"No, it's just hard."

"Would you consider yourself to be a good person?"

"My English is not that good."

I tried for a minute or two to take Ruben through the Law. But the language barrier was too great. "Oh, I wish I had my Spanish million dollar bills." I said aloud.

With a somewhat perplexed look on his face, Ruben said, "This is in Spanish."

"What?"

"This is in Spanish."

I took the tract from his hand and inspected the gospel text. Umm, yeah, it was in Spanish.

Now, on the one hand, this was a good thing. At least Ruben was able to read the Law and the Gospel in his own language.

Well, this is the stack of million dollar bills I have been using all week. That means all of the "gringos" to whom I handed million dollar bill gospel tracts this week probably scratched their heads as I walked away wondering why the strange white man handed them "funny money" with Spanish text on the back.

"Doh!"

Oh well. Maybe some of the folks to whom I gave the Spanish million dollar bills were bi-lingual.

Pray that the Lord will use the gospel tract to bring Ruben to repentance and faith.

The next conversation I had was, well, very special. Stay tuned. :-)