It has been three weeks, everyone! So much has been happening, and I want to apologize for not releasing a blog last week. I’ll be sharing multiple one-topic blogs soon, so stay tuned!
This week, we had the opportunity to leave the premises to evangelize. After 12 days here, I was glad to finally see Gainesville. They dropped us off at Kroger, and I immediately decided to join Carter instead of evangelizing at Kroger like the other 30 people. God started us off strong, and we learned that the first three people we spoke to were busy. Praise God for that coincidence!
During our time in the parking lot and surrounding shops, Carter and I felt like opposite sides of the same coin. He felt aimless and wanted to sit down, pray, and talk to other squad mates, while I felt the need to move, engage with people, and not dawdle. Neither of us was entirely correct. Even so, after encountering a few people with closed hearts, we spoke with several who were quite open. I helped a guy with his cart, talked to a man in line who might propose soon (and we prayed for him), and encouraged and prayed with an iron worker who had gotten off work recently.
Being guys, we had some great ideas, most notably buying cookies to hand out. We thought this would work well because others were handing out flowers. However, it turned out that two guys handing out cookies might seem odd; we only managed to give one to the iron worker and a few others in our group. After some discussion, I teamed up with Bella, thinking it would help us approach people with less unease since two guys might make some girls hesitant to talk to us and two girls going up to a random guy could be problematic. This might be different in other countries, of course. Bella and I had a lovely conversation with a nice lady and shared the message that Jesus loves everyone.
Being in the Bible Belt can be disheartening because almost everyone knows the name Jesus but often has closed hearts when it comes to inspiration and interest—at least outwardly.
Our time evangelizing left us with 45 minutes to be the light of God and spread the message, but we also got to do some shopping. Many people picked up useful items like beard oil (which I bought a few days ago) and other necessities. I had so many great ideas, as I mentioned earlier, that I ended up buying Mike and Ike’s and a baguette. Good choice, right? This allowed me to enjoy more sugar than a kid on Halloween, “knight” people with the long loaf, and eat food with my hands resting at my sides. Overall, it was a great experience, regardless of some of the people we encountered.
Thank you so much for reading my blog and for your support! I’m currently at 70% of my funding goal, and I have no doubt I will be fully funded well before the deadline! So let’s celebrate! To the two people who read my blog post immediately, I plan to finish another blog or two in the car. I left today, September 23rd, at 11 o’clock, and I’m traveling to Mississippi to serve as a domestic missionary for a week. We will be staying on an Indian reservation and living with the Mennonites there. I hope to talk to you again in a couple of hours, but until then, thank you and God bless!
Carter^
Brandon getting rolled by Caleb ^
Weeeeeeeeeeeee
