Couples Outreach

I just got back from my early morning walk. Today I saw a family of monkeys crossing the street. Mama monkey had a baby on her back. I also saw crabs and iguanas. It is truly lovely here. The grass is intensely green, birds are singing and flying everywhere, and there are beautiful orange butterflies!

Last night we had our first couples' meeting. We showed the movie Fireproof. Six couples attended, three believers and three non-believers. It went very well. We used our LCD projector and brand-new digital speakers with surround sound, with a white sheet for screen because we can't fit our screen in the little Nissan Stanza (with one windshield wiper) that we are driving. We met at the Christ for the City house. Our friend, who is the actual owner of the house and a non-believer, arranged for pizza to be delivered. Now, that was a production. There is actually a Pizza Hut in a town about 20 minutes from here, but when he asked for delivery, they did not want to do it because we are so far away. He was told to call again by four o'clock to talk to the manager. The manager agreed to make the delivery to our compound, which is a little closer and easier to find than our little town. We ended up waiting at the wrong gate for the delivery, but after calling Pizza Hut back, we finally connected with the delivery man. They deliver pizza here on motorcycles. The man apologized because he said the pizzas shifted in the boxes on account of the many ruts on the road. When I opened the boxes later on, I found the pizza stuck to the lids!

Any way, we had loaded our little car with DVD player, projector, speakers, cooler for drinks, cups, napkins, plates, sheet, tape, surge protector, mix for lemonade, ice, hand outs, and Raid for the bugs. Now we also had three large pizzas. We stopped on our way to pick up one of the couples who is also having car trouble. There seems to be an epidemic around here. The owners of the house actually live in another house right next door, so they had come earlier to clean. Everything was spotless. With all their help, we quickly hung the sheet and set up all the equipment. They have these huge Kamikaze bugs around here that like to land on your hair. I used a lot of Raid to take care of that. People were a little late arriving, so we started about 40 minutes late.

As an icebreaker, we read some humorous differences between men and women. We also had a prize for the couple who had been married the least amount of years. We had a soccer ball for the man and a make up bag for the woman. This was one of the Christian couples, but they are having marital problems. I am glad they won. Afterwards, they told me that their son wanted a soccer ball, but they could not afford one, so they had told them that he should wait until the Lord provided. Little did they know that the Lord would provide one the very next day! Pray for Susie and Alexander.

Following the movie, we had a brief discussion about the movie, what they liked and did not like, etc. They all said that they would like to attend the follow-up meetings. We will meet the next three Fridays. They took all the left over pizza and even the left over lemonade home. Nothing gets wasted in this culture. Everybody left shortly before ten o'clock. We are just praying that the Lord will bring back all the couples and He would use our efforts for His glory.

John is scheduled to preach at church on Sunday. Please pray for all these opportunities to share and that the Lord will use us for His glory.

Until next time...from the beach...