Douglasville, GA
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This report comes to us from team leader Jeremy with our team in Douglasville, GA:
Christine and I set up a table at the last Food Truck Mondays event of the summer. While the Food Trucks draw much fewer people than the concerts, the conversations have always been richer because people are more willing to linger, since they aren’t focused on finding a seat at the concert. This week was no exception.
God routinely sends us one or more people who convey to me: “This is why you were here tonight. This is who I sent you here for.” The first was a young Hispanic man named Arizona. He was baptized Catholic, but his family left the Church when he was young, so he had never been confirmed. He hadn’t gone to any kind of church consistently since. We shared the Gospel with him through the Rosary. Telling him that the Church still regarded him as a Catholic by virtue of His baptism and that this sacrament left an indelible mark on his soul resonated with him. I added, though, a serious warning: that by walking away from the Church and not seeking to return to confession to have his sins forgiven, he was putting his soul at risk of damnation. In saying something that may be perceived as “harsh” in our culture, I had to trust the Spirit for the grace to enable me to “speak the truth in love.” He left saying that he was very happy that we had this encounter and that the conversation was meaningful to him. In our strategy of “listening and befriending,” this is the response we hope for, even though we may speak hard truths.
Praised be Jesus Christ!