Lincoln, NE. Here’s a recent check-in from Wayne:
Our evangelists this Saturday were Sue, Tom, Bob and Bob’s daughter Katy. We started at 8 as we anticipated people may be out early to beat the heat and we were right. Joanne stopped by. She is a practicing Catholic who was pleased to see us evangelizing for the Catholic Church. She said she has had an unusually high number of friends and family who have passed away in the past few weeks as well as at least one who is expected to pass away very soon. She took some medals and prayer cards to share with the family members of the recently deceased. I discussed the power of the divine mercy chaplet when prayed at the bedside of a person who is in imminent threat of death. She had never heard that before and said that she rarely prays the divine mercy but that she will look into that chaplet more.
I met “K”, a young (early-mid 20’s) non-practicing Catholic when I offered her and her friend an “angel medal” (the St. Michael medal). She accepted the medal and then we began chatting about her faith and her family. I actually know numerous members of her family, one of whom is a bishop in a distant diocese. She said that she has sampled a number of other churches but hasn’t found anything that seemed to suit her and has not been going to any church for about a year or so. I asked her if she liked to read and she said she did, so I handed her Curtis Martin’s book, Made for More. She asked if we had Bibles, which we don’t unfortunately, but I was able to give her the Gospel of Luke, so hopefully she will read that and it will inspire her to purchase her own Bible. I also provided her with some pamphlets on reasons to come back to the Catholic Church.
We met Andy, a 20-something “fallen away” Catholic who was not expecting to meet Catholic evangelists on a Saturday morning at the Farmer’s Market in Lincoln. When I offered his group rosaries you could see his two worlds collide by the look on his face. He went from totally oblivious to our presence to deeply thoughtful and engaged. We chatted for a few minutes as his friends waited and he took a rosary the pamphlet on how to pray the rosary and a Matthew Kelly book. He said he needed to get back to the Church and based on our conversation, I think that is highly likely.
Clay approached us to thank us for evangelizing (that happened frequently today). He asked us where the nearest Catholic Church is (nearest to the Farmer’s Market) so I directed him to St. Mary and St. Thomas Aquinas. We also gave him a St. Michael medal and prayer card to protect him in battle. He is from Savannah, Georgia, so we discussed their beautiful Cathedral, St. John the Baptist and its beautiful nativity scene that is displayed each Christmas.
Brett, Megan and Claire accepted “angel” medals. Claire is Catholic but Brett & Megan are Presbyterian, well at least for the time being. Brett said they were planning to convert to Catholicism. With that information, I provided them with some additional materials and told them about Scott Hahn’s book, Rome Sweet Home. Unfortunately, we didn’t have any copies of Hahn’s book, nor did we have his CD, but Brett took down the information and thought it was pretty cool that we were able to provide him this information with such ease. I asked him if they were going to take the RCIA course that probably starts in a parish near him this September and he said that they may do that or they might try to do private instruction with a priest.
Praised be Jesus Christ! You pretty much just need to show up. The Lincoln, Nebraska team had these five encounters, and more, just on this one outing. You just set up with materials and a few materials and prayers, and a few questions to ask, and the people will come to you! You just have to get out there! It’s not hard – so come join us!