Mennonites Wear Bonnets And Still Spread The Gospel

I worked more than 15 hours on Wednesday. That was no fun.

Wednesday evening I got to meet my old associate Robert who is still in Toronto, in the same crappy office building. For a filthy rich guy he sure does not know how to treat himself. While we were getting our business done he asked me if I know my biological father, and I explained to him that he abandoned me before I was born and tried to kill me. Robert was agitated and told me the story about his grandfather. Well back in the 30’s Robert’s father was in India, his grandfather had taken him there to live for a while. His grandfather then abandoned the family and moved to London to live the high life. Robert’s dad, many years later visited his father to get some closure, but the grandfather showed no remorse for what he had done. A sad sad tale and I could see the pain in Robert’s eyes as he told the story. Robert is typically a jerk-face so I’ve never seen this side of him before.

Anyway, Wednesday night ended with a great big success. Yesterday was Thursday and I worked through the day – seemingly getting nothing done even though working over 12 hours.

I went downtown very early to do the homeless outreach. Actually traffic was really nasty – something I downright hate about Toronto. A 20 minute drive took 1 hour. I needed to get some errands done before hand. I parked my car in the usual spot and my credit card was declined at the parking meter, even though there was plenty of cash available on it. I walked about 20 minutes to the FedEx location only to have them tell me that their pickup time was at 6pm. They recommended I go to another location – wouldn’t you know it, very close to where I parked. I would have gone there first but the FedEx website didn’t even mention that location. Anyway it was a FedEx Kinkos. I walked all the way back there and submitted my envelope. The lady told me they don’t currently accept any cash or debit, LOL. So I paid with my credit card just fine.

We reached out to a bunch of homeless and got to really chat with them this time around. The weather was actually quite nice. Around 10pm we headed to our evangelism spot on Yonge and Dundas, where we met about 40 Mennonites from Kitchener who come to sing songs and evangelize. I’ve seen them for years but this time I stopped and introduced myself. There are so many great Christian groups spreading the good news in the area. It was great to make friends with them and it was so uplifting for me to see other Christians doing God’s work there. We talked to a lot of people about Jesus that night and I thought it was a huge success.

Progress

7 people signed up for homeless outreach. 3 of them showed, plus another 9 who didn’t sign up which was a pleasant surprise. We went to a church in Toronto for orientation (which was a mistake, I should have just trained them myself) then went downtown and split up into groups. Giving out food and supplies to the homeless and talking to them, trying to give them hope for the present and future. Some of the homeless hid in the corners of ally’s and bushes and others were bold and put themselves on the sidewalk. Some didn’t even have sleeping bags or blankets. Some stored away our food for later and others gobbled it up right away. When we got back some of the group thanked me and asked if they could come along more often. Progress.