Sorry for the incredibly late post! I’m posting this over a month and a half late. I have been slacking.
We just completed another trip out to the DART, again with wonderful results. I cannot emphasize enough the hunger that is out there for truth.
This time out, it was me, Tom, and Tom’s friend Matt, who was in town for a few days and wanted to join us. In order to be better stewards of our time, and better husbands to our wives who are at home patiently waiting for us, we planned our route much better this time, keeping a close watch on our time and the stops. The past two times we ended up on the far end of the rail, not getting back until 2 AM at times. This time we were able to be home by 11:30 pm, which was much appreciated by our wives.
In addition I have Tom’s accounts to share with you and not just my own (I forced him to keep a mental note of who we spoke to). They are quite brief but I am trying to progressively get them to remember more details.
We rushed onto the platform, barely getting our tickets out of the machine before the 9:45 rolled in. We said a quick prayer together then hopped on. As always we split up, I went on my own, and Matt went with Tom since it was his first time out and he wanted to observe.
The first person I spoke with was a Latino man sitting by himself. I sat next to him and started to engage him in conversation. I asked him if he spoke English and he said yes. After about 30 seconds of talking, I realized he did not speak English at all but was trying to pretend like he did. I politely excused myself and moved on.
Tom first spoke to a Hispanic man named Johnny. He was a fallen away Catholic who no longer attended Mass. Interestingly though it was obvious that the desire to return to the Church was there. He recounted to Tom the joy of his first communion when he was young. Tom spoke to him more and really challenged him to reignite his faith and return to the Church.
After another stop, I moved down the train and saw an African American man sitting alone listening to music, staring out the window the opposite direction from me. This is one of the hurdles of modern evangelization: getting someone’s attention. People rarely pay any attention to their surroundings anymore. They just want to tune out and just go from point A to point B. So I knew I needed to get his music away from him. So I asked him what he was listening to, and he responded with some rap band I’ve never heard of. So I asked him if I could listen, and he reluctantly agreed, obviously annoyed with someone bothering him and also suspicious that some random person wants to hear his music.
After he started handing me the iPod, I said “I actually don’t want to listen to your music, I just want to talk to you.” So I introduced myself and he said his name was Marcus. I engaged him in conversation, directing it quickly to his faith. I learned he was Baptist and his father was a Baptist minister. So I asked him why he was Baptist, and what that meant. After talking a bit longer I was able to go straight to the Eucharist, explaining what it meant and how it divided us as Catholic and non-Catholic. He was extremely receptive and said he had never heard of that teaching in his whole life. Our stop at Mockingbird station came and so I had to leave him, but he thanked me for teaching him and also agreed to pray over John 6. I was in such a rush not to miss our stop that I forgot to hand him any materials.
When we were off the train, we were completely overwhelmed with crowds of people. The bars were extremely busy, and the movie theater was also packed. We struggled to find anyone approachable, but Tom found a group of people sitting near a fountain with guitars at their feet, and so he went over and engaged them.
Tom and Matt spoke with Abraham, Diario, and Ireen. Interestingly they all happened to be Catholic (Tom always ends up talking to Catholics, I always end up talking to Baptists). Two of them were a married couple and they said that they go to the Cathedral downtown. The other young man was fallen away. He grew up Catholic and has since not been going to Church or very active in his faith. Tom and Matt shared with them that they were out evangelizing people, sharing with people the message of God’s love. They were very interested and excited to hear about it.
While Tom and Matt were talking, I walked around looking for someone to talk to. The trouble with the stops near bars is that everyone is crowded together, making one on one conversation difficult, and a lot of people have been drinking, and someone who is buzzed or drunk is not worth your time. So I wandered around for a bit without much luck. I found two women talking at a table alone and started to approach them, but they were just finishing coffee and left before I made it there. Finally I saw a guy standing alone, impatiently checking his phone. I started talking to him and learned he was waiting for his girlfriend, who was on her way to meet him. So I worked with what time I had but before I could get into anything deep his girlfriend showed up and he ran off.
With hopes of finding smaller groups of people, we headed back to the platform. On the way there I found an African American man standing by himself in the middle of the walkway. Tonight was a night of providential conversation starters. Right where he was standing, there was a sign on the fence that was advertising a Gospel music band. I felt very strongly that I should speak with him, and the sign was icing on the cake. I asked him if he had ever heard of the band, and he responded yes, so I asked him if he liked Gospel music. He said yes, he listens to it all the time. So I asked him if he had faith in God, and if he went to church. He said that he was a believer in Jesus and prayed all the time, that he did not attend any church, but really felt like he needed to start going. I asked him why he didn’t go, and he said that he felt lost and never found a church where he felt at home with because the teachings were never the same.
After assuring him there was a home for him, I asked him what he thought it takes to get to heaven, and he responded that he wasn’t sure. So I asked him “What did Jesus say it takes to get to heaven while he was here on earth?” He responded “Well, Jesus said a lot of things, but I guess I think you just need to have faith.” I was already starting to like this guy for his sincerity, because what he said is true. Jesus did say a lot of things, and without the Church to guide us it is easy to become confused or just pick and choose the teachings we like and don’t like. So I explained to him what Jesus said, that we must believe and be baptized, that we must obey the commandments, and that we must enter into the New Covenant with God by consuming Jesus’s body and blood, which only the Catholic Church can provide. He was very surprised to hear about the teaching on the Eucharist, but also very receptive and thankful. He said he had been praying and waiting for someone to come and give him the truth, and that us coming out that night was the answer to his prayer. It was humbling and just one more reason to praise God’s mercy. We talked a bit longer about our different jobs and backgrounds, then I gave him some of our material and got on the train heading back Richardson.
Tom and Matt spoke to a man named Danny and his son Tralin. They were very scared and apprehensive when they approached them until Tom asked what church they went to. That really opened up the conversation and eventually Danny asked Tom to pray for him and his son, which they immediately did.
After a few minutes of walking the train, I found the last person I spoke to for the night. His name was David, and he was a DART employee whose job it was to count the number of people who get on and off at each stop, and record the data into a PDA. I talked to him for a little while and learned that he was Baptist, and attended a nearby missionary church. I asked him what the difference was between all the denominations and churches, and he responded “Well, it’s all ideological but none of it matters as long as you just have Jesus.” Anyone who either comes from a Protestant background, especially non-denominational like me, knows that saying very well. This is the default response you will get from people who have either become content in their situation and do not want to seek further, or could not find the answers they were looking for and so it is the easiest way for them to cope with the lack of unity. If all we needed was Jesus, there would be no differences between us, but there are, and the question you have to ask is: whose version of Jesus are you following? So I tried to charitably explain to him that there are very real and important differences between him as a Baptist, and me as a Catholic, starting with (as always) the Eucharist. He had never heard the word before, but he was very familiar with the Bread of Life discourse and also the Last Supper.
He actually began to teach me why he was right and I was mistaken, and he did it in a way that I’ve never seen before. Usually people who actually know this teaching and disagree with it tend to stay on the symbolical side, saying that Jesus was never being literal when he talked about His Body and Blood. But this guy said that Jesus in fact was being literal, but that he meant for us to consume Him as the Word, by reading about him and consuming Him spiritually. I explained that humans are both body and soul, and so we can definitely receive Jesus spiritually through prayer and scripture reading, but also physically through the Eucharist because God doesn’t only love our souls, He loves our bodies too. In fact he loved them so much that He took on a body Himself for about 33 years. David was pretty surprised at this and we did not get much more time to talk before our stop came. He took some material and agreed to pray for us. We got off the train and onto the platform.
In all, it was a short but very productive night. We used our time very well and came home to happy wives. Praise God and His mercy to the lost sheep of Dallas.
No comments:
Post a Comment