This evening Lily and I met with two friends, Char and Kellie. The longer we talked to them, the lower my heart sank. You see, just four days after our first fellowship meeting, they wanted to call it quits.
We asked them why. Too much time, one more thing to add to the schedule, too few people came the first time, feeling of pressure to be there every week, and not fun. These were the reasons we were hearing. They were discouraged, giving up before they even got started, and I wasn’t doing a good job of encouraging them at all. I felt like I was just trying to convince them not to give up, blabbing away, not really acknowledging their disappointment and loving on them. It was awkward!
After I got home, I was talking about it with Rozanne. She was telling me how SHE had had a tough conversation today with a girl she thought was in the family but now was saying that she wasn’t. Then it hit me.
Something weird is going on! Char and Kelly are two faithful people who are excited about the Son and growing in their faith and full of life. The things they were saying earlier this evening didn’t sound anything like them! It didn’t even make sense that they would want to give up after only one week. This is a spiritual attack from the enemy! Just like him, to kill something in infancy, while it’s still weak and vulnerable and not fully established.
Would you pray and ask the Lord to break off this attack of discouragement and help our friends to know His passion? Thanks so much for warring with us and making a huge impact in Asia! I know it makes a difference; that’s why I’m writing this email at 1:00 in the morning!
Well, we had our first boot camp almost two weeks ago! We were going to do two of them in one weekend, but because of schedules only had enough people for one. In one day we covered repentance, water baptizing, being filled with the Holy Spirit, getting to know the Son, discussed our new fellowship, and saw 5 friends get water baptized! One of the really cool things was to see the cost in time, attention, and participation that our friends were willing to pay to make it through the whole day. Also, ending the day with the water dunking was amazing; everyone left seemingly full of life and excitement. It was awesome!