Evangelizing to Muslims

Here's another update for y'all.

Well having fourteen people who are all very different live together for the past three weeks has had its challenges. Despite this though we've remained very unified together and we spent part of today resolving any issues we may have had. I'm surprised though how I have handled living so closely to my team mates. I normally need a lot of alone time to myself but I hardly have any here but I still feel totally refreshed especially after I have my quiet times and I tell God I just want live that day for Him with everything that I've got.

We've been evangelizing since we've been here and God has given us some pretty great opportunities. I'll give you a couple of examples. Every time I have prayed for opportunities to witness to people or to share my testimony God has been faithful even when it looks like it, God somehow works it out. You just have to be faithful and God will me you there.

I was sitting at a bus stop. We had just come from the mall and had finished eating. We looked around the mall and then walked across the street. Across the busy street we didn't find any obvious places where we could share with people. Finally we recognized a bus stop, about twenty people we there sitting down, waiting for a bus to arrive. I sat down and watched one of my team mates try to get into a discussion a Muslim woman. "Hi there," she began. "My name is Sarah Jane. Can I ask you some questions?" The woman shook her head. Sarah retreated to another seat and began another discussion with a different man. I however waited. I wasn't sure that this time we would get to share with anyone. I looked at the blank unfriendly faces of everyone at the bus station. I got out my camera. I thought, "This could get a conversation going..." And sure enough a man behind started looking at my pictures. I tried talking to him in English. "Tiger", I said pointing to the picture of an Indian Tiger, I took at Perth Zoo. He murmured the Indonesian word for Tiger. "Do you speak English?" I asked. "No," he laughed and shook his head. Soon he left but said good-bye to me and headed for his bus. There was a young guy with slicked back spikes for hair. He was taking a break and sat down next to me just as the other man was leaving. We started speaking in broken English. He was selling magazines and trying to get me to buy one but I began talking to him about his life, how long he's been working selling magazines, if he was Muslim. My translator was Harry. I tell you a bit about Harry later but through our conversation Val told me he had a girlfriend, that he had been working selling magazines for seven years, and yes that he was Muslim. Yet, as soon as I said I was a Christian he put his two index fingers together saying that Christians and Muslims were friends. "Yes," I said, "Yes. Muslims and Christians are good friends. Since you say that Christians and Muslims are good friends, I would like honor and respect you and pray for you and anything you need prayer for." It took awhile for Harry to translate this but Val looked incredibly grateful for this and nodded his head saying, "Yes! Yes!" I prayed for his life, his business, his desire to provide for his family, and his ability to give his sister an education. It was a tall order but he amen'd everything I prayed for and was so grateful he gave me and the two others I was with a box of donuts he had bought. We said thank you and got his number. We may hang out with him later.

Second example happened today. We were wondering by a nearby mall. Marianna and I were walking with our translator Harry as we browsed a video game arcade. As we passed by one of the games Harry began speaking to one of the guys who was playing. Marianna and I walked towards Harry. Yadi, was a man in his mid thirties. We found out through our conversation that this man was pretty smart. He owned ten stores that sold cell phones here in Jakarta. He majored in Engineering which he did for a job but he got so bored sometimes he would come to the Arcade just to relax. The game he was playing was one of those ticket-winning games you play by dropping a coin down a slot trying to make it into little buckets which spun around from the center with "10" "25" and "Jackpot" written on them. The buckets had a hole at the top which the coin was supposed to drop into. Each time in dropped into the bucket you would receive as many tickets as the bucket had written on. You could get 100 tickets by dropping the coin into the jackpot barrel. Yadi was dropping his coins into the Jackpot barrel 1 out of 2 times, which was amazing. This guy was racking up tickets like nobody's business. He had a system. He had figured out the timing and was winning big. Anyway this guy was pretty friendly as we spent an hour talking to him in the arcade. At the same time Marianna was talking to a couple of adorable Muslim girls who were looking at us from there hoods and smiling. I had the chance to pray for Yadi and Marianna prayed for the Muslim girls. Well after our conversation, Yadi invited both Marianna and I to dinner at KFC which was right across the arcade. Even when the two others who were with us, Josh and Paul, came Yadi invited them as well to dinner. So we all sat together and I spoke to Yadi even further. As I was about to eat my dinner, a bashful little Muslim girl came up to me. She asked me through Harry if I would pray for her too and I of course agreed but then when I asked her what she would like me to pray for she ran embarrassed back to her friend. They whispered and spoke to one another and finally she had the courage to come back to me and asked me to pray for her family and school. It was a great day. It's always difficult to see how God is going to work opportunities but you just go out and pray for them and they just come.

Now a word about Muslims. Most Muslims are wonderful. They are people who are very dedicated to their families. The things is that most Muslims see their religion as better than Christianity, so when you ask a Muslim to convert to Christianity you can see why they're totally offended.

I believe if Jesus was here he would want to love Muslims by showing them honor and respect and that is what I have found effective in building friendships with them. I ask if I can pray for them and their families and all of a sudden I've done something that probably no Christian has never done for them before. First of all, Muslims think that Christians are gossiping and talking bad about them when they go to their daily prayers. Muslims as you may know pray five times a day. Not all Muslims do this but many do. For some reason they have developed this stereotype of Christians that we don't like them and they we are plotting against them even as they pray. Sound familiar doesn't?

But the Muslims that I have spoken to want to love peacefully with Christians, just like the boy in the bus station did when he said Christians and Muslims are friends. Anyway, the US is seen as a Christian nation. Just as you see Indonesia or Iran or Malaysia as Muslim nations so is the US seen as a Christian nation. But you see the problem is when they watch American movies with sex-scenes and sexual content they associate that with Christianity. They think Christians are like this even though its just in the movies and the people who makes the movies are not even Christian. And they believe that Westerners are very loose and that they think of sex all the time because that is what is in the movies. Well praying for them and blessing them and not getting in their face and trying to convict them to betray everything they know about themselves is a much better way to witness the Gospel to them. They're very receptive if you're truly genuine. But here we are, breaking the stereotypes and sowing seeds that hopefully will bear fruit.