danny’s space

This morning, a bunch of us again went to Ashfield train station in the morning to hand out those Christmas quizzes. I had thankfully rested enough to go this time, and it was an interesting experience indeed. The public were generally more receptive to leaflets than the typical university student who tends to avoid any piece of paper pointed at them within a 10m radius. We tooted expressions like “Test your Christmas knowledge” and “Would you like a Christmas quiz?”. The words ‘Christmas quiz’ will never have the same meaning again - and they’re actually quite a mouthful, especially if there’s a whole crowd of people walking towards the station entrance trying to get to work on time.

A couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses were there as well handing out copies of their Watchtower booklet things in Chinese. They moved around a bit but hopefully we got to more people than they did - unfortunately their material was in Chinese which worked better for the ethnicitiy of Ashfield.

Early in the morning of leafletting, this couple walked up and did the quiz on the spot. The guy got 9/10, and it turned out that he was a devout Catholic. We ended up having an extended semi-heated discussion on the Catholic belief that works and faith together were necessary to be saved, and that the only true church was the Catholic church. Of course as an Evangelical, I argued that the Bible said that only faith was necessary to be right with God, and that we didn’t follow the spooky bells and smells sacraments that Catholics follow. Unfortunately it was a pretty one-sided debate as I wasn’t quick enough on my Bible application to be able to rebutt his arguments, and both of us were quite unmovable from our own beliefs. If only I pulled out Ephesians 2:8-9, which Rachel reminded me of afterwards. It was encouraging though to hear that Sabrina was praying for the conversation as it was happening. This event also spurred me to want to read more on Catholics vs Evangelicals to be able to argue more effectively for the Evangelical beliefs.

There was an EasyWay next to the station, in clear view of where we were standing to leaflet. Unfortunately it didn’t open before we went back to the church, so we had to bodge that idea.

After a debrief and team meeting, we continued doorknocking. Dee and I went out again to the streets of Ashfield around the church. The first house we got to (the last house we didn’t get to do on the previous day) had a high white metallic gate and many more gates before the actual entrance of the house - Guantanamo Bay has less security than this. After we rang the doorbell, two scary looking dogs started barking but thankfully they were contained by yet another side gate. The owner wasn’t pleased to see us, and so we left. We didn’t get into that many encouraging conversations this time around.

Then came lunch, after which we went to Ashfield mall with the aim of going to EasyWay, but also needing to buy stuff like tissues, balloons, face paint, etc. We looked around everywhere to get sculpting balloons for use in the markets the next day but unfortunately couldn’t find much, and spent most of our time looking around. We had to get the normal balloons back to the kids club guys so couldn’t get EasyWay. Oh well.

After a bit of a break as we were all pretty tired, we mixed it up for the afternoon session of doorknocking - partners were swapped around, and we still went guy/girl experienced/inexperienced. Rachel and I went around together, and most of the houses we visited rejected us, didn’t have anyone home, or were apartments. There was one scary disused-looking house with a wild, unkept front yard which we walked into anyway - we shouldn’t discount anyone just because their front yard is untidy! We rang the doorbell a few times and no one answered, so we decided to leave. Just as we closed the outside gate, we saw this super scary attack dog walk out from the side of the house. Phew, got out of that one just in time.

We were getting quite weary by the end of the afternoon, but God answered out prayers before we even prayed them. He provided us with a great conversation with Katay’s neighbour, Emilio, who believed that all religions came to the same god and that you just had to think hard enough to understand. He was also apparently a Catholic, but subscribed to the school of thought put forward by Thomas Merton. Emilio was a really friendly guy and didn’t mind us chatting to him, especially once the initial awkwardness passed. I’m really thankful for Rachel too, as we were both on the same wavelength (probably partly due to our similar training with EU and other missions) and so could back each other up. We both saw where the other was heading most of the time so basically we formed a coherent one in terms of conversation. It was also really encouraging to see her ability to apply the Bible on the spot, and really spurred me to learn to do the same.

Needless to say, we were late for dinner as we got to Emilio’s house a bit late (the whole afternoon was characterised by lateness, really). Rachel and I debriefed about the afternoon before we both forgot things. After dinner, one of the parishoners who actually started a postdoc position in the School of Chemistry at USyd, a Toby Hudson, gave an interesting talk on intelligent design and evolution. The talk itself was quite complex and technical, and if it wasn’t for my biology background, I wouldn’t have been able to understand it. Grace came again which was fantastic, and she actually understood quite a bit! She had questions at the end, and we explained to her how Christians could also believe in the Big Bang (which was a theory she subscribed to) as Genesis doesn’t tell us how the universe was created, but only why and by who. We walked her home afterwards as the seminar finished pretty late.

And then came sleep.