Street Evangelism

Dear Diary,

The sky looks like it gonna rain anytime… hmmm… I will see if I get to run this evening. After all, my muscles are still kinda sore from the 6-km tactical route march on Friday. I seriously think that when the military says 6 kilometres, we need a confidence interval or maybe a +/- 2 km? Perhaps, we should leave out the minus sign because it never happened that way, haha… Besides, the F1 Grand Prix will be telecasted “live” on TV at 7.30pm. I will catch it, although admittedly I dozed off on two occasions when I was watching the F1 race in the last two evenings, hee…

Thursday was a great day. A particular colleague seemed to be in a foul mood (PMS?) and I was so glad that my job gives me the flexibility of leaving the office when I want to, haha… Met up with a former pharmacy classmate for lunch at a nearby food court. It was nice chatting with him and hearing his perspective of things. He was talking about a business development executive dinner gathering for all those in this field from our pharmacy class. Sounds cool! ;-) That afternoon, it was probably the first time I am engaged in business discussion ALONE with someone who can make decisions for his company. I thought it was a partial success. My company had been pushing for the two deals to go through for years but in vain. I think I may have just potentially wrapped up one of the business deals with this company but the other deal looks to be in dead waters. Nonetheless, call me mediocre if you want, haha… I am pleased with a one out of two score! ;-) Next week looks a little challenging but I think I may just get a break-through deal with a particularly “impregnable” institution, haha… I have only 3 days next week since Wednesday (1st October) is a public holiday and I specially took “off” on Friday. I just realised that my official working hours (exclusive of lunch hours) per week is just 37.5 hours! European standard indeed! =)

Friday was basically the army. I drove to the military camp for the first time in my life. Gave a friend a lift. It was luxury indeed. We went for this 6-km walk with about 6kg distributed on our body. The helmet seemed to have shrinked (or has my head grown in size?) and my temples felt a little bruised. Under the fierce sun, trudging on slippery mud, going down and uphill constantly, jumping over potholes, crossing streams, walking in canals and under flyovers… Top that up with a parade in the middle of some bare sandy land… No wonder my right shin muscle (at the anterolateral region) was screaming in aches when I depressed and released the accelerator during my journey home, made worse with that huge jam along PIE, resulting in long periods when my car was creeping at just 20 km per hour. Glad I survived this army recall, still have another 2 more one-day stints in October and November. =(

Yesterday, after a long period of vacillation, I went to do some street evangelism for the first time in my life. That was despite some discouragements from fellow Christians! I thought it might be a bad day after all when a bus driver ignored me when I flagged for his bus. I hopped onto another bus much later and saw that, past the bend just less than 300m from my bus stop, the earlier bus had broken down! Ooohhh, I did not pray for that, ok? Haha… So I was on my way to church, to join the Young Adult (YA) Ministry service for the first time in possibly 3 years (excluding the yearly YA camps). When I subsequently emerged into City Hall, the whirling sounds of the F1 racing cars were unmistakenable. There were a huge crowd thronging the walkways too.

We had a short prayer session in church and then we were off. I was paired up with this young male NUS student and we went around to find our “victims”, haha… We approached a Caucasian couple sitting in the grounds of the Cathedral but they ignored us. I was not discouraged because I was once a pharmacist… booo hooo, hahaha… My partner cajoled me to go out to the streets and maybe talk to some of those people alone amongst the festivities. It was fruitless and we went back to the Cathedral grounds again. I was telling him why we saw so many girls and no guys!!!

“If we don’t see any guy around again (our rule is that we are supposed to talk to guys only and leave our female counterparts to talk to the girls), we will go find that cool girl who was taking pictures of our cathedral with her SLR camera earlier! Haha…” I quipped. Shortly, I saw two Burmese guys who were lazing at the side of the Koi pond. We approached them and then it was almost an hour of talking about God, Christ Jesus, the Original Sin, the salvation plan and the meaning of life. I did not use the tracts that the church provided. I shared from my heart the thoughts and experiences I went through. The response from the two Burmese guys was very positive and I pray that they will know God in Christ Jesus eventually. I did not use the church tracts because I felt that it seems confrontational with that slogan “Do you know for sure that you are going to be with God in heaven?” I remembered how a young Caucasian young man from the Church of the Latter-Day Saints (LDS) tried to “evangelise” to me after my dinner in Toa Payoh then and he made it non-confrontational. Although I disagreed with him on many instances, the sharing did not end in any negative note. I guess I emulate him on that and put that into practice. It is, after all, not my effort or eloquence or intelligence which will win the souls for the Kingdom of God but by God’s grace and mercy for that individual. Besides, there is always a right time for a particular outcome. May we who share Christ with others, live our lives as Christ will us to, that we love one another so that others will know that we are Christ’s disciples (John 13:34 – 35).

Anyway, just to leave you a little joke:

“Two important qualities of a doctor”:

First-year students at a medical school were receiving their first Anatomy lesson with a real dead human body. They all gathered around the surgery table with the body covered with a white sheet.
The professor started the class by telling them: “In medicine, it is necessary to have 2 important qualities as a doctor. The first is that you not be disgusted by anything involving the human body.
For an example,” the Professor pulled back the sheet, stuck his finger in the buttocks of the corpse, withdrew it and stuck his finger in his mouth.
'Go ahead and do the same thing,' he told his students.The students freaked out, hesitated for several minutes, but eventually took turns sticking a finger in the buttocks of the dead body and sucking on it. Each one tried his best not to puke.
When everyone had finished, the Professor looked at them and told them, 'The second most important quality is observation. I stuck in my middle finger and sucked on my Index finger. The second important quality is to learn to pay attention.'

God Bless,

Andrew