Springfield, OR
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The following report comes to us from team leader Wendy with our team in Springfield, Oregon:
Our street evangelization team has been setting up on Saturday afternoons in our downtown restaurant neighborhood, but we recently discovered that we have more lengthy encounters on Friday evenings during the monthly downtown Art Walk series. People are much more relaxed, and interested in talking.
A handful of people were interested in receiving a rosary and brochure on how to pray it. We also had a family of four who weren’t actively practicing their faith but they were visiting the area and stopped to talk to us. They each wanted a Miraculous Medal, we encouraged them to come back to Mass. We prayed for their family and they walked away all very happy and admiring the necklaces on each other. We even had a couple of Protestant people who did not want rosaries or medals, but they did want us to pray with them for their specific intentions.
One man who did not have any religious affiliation, said that he is plagued by doubts as to whether God exists, and he has been hoping for a sign. He wondered if perhaps running into us on the street could be that sign. He said he hoped that there is a God but he wants to see some proof, and he can’t help thinking that God might just be a character invented by man to explain the difficult questions in life. We talked about the Bible as the inspired Word of God, as well as how the sciences support theology rather than contradict it. He did not want to give us his name, but he very much wanted us to pray for him. He was too self-conscious to let us pray for him in public so we said we would keep him in our personal prayers.
Finally, a young lady approached us and said that she is feeling a very strong pull into the Catholic Church. She and her husband are both practicing Christians now, but her husband
was raised Muslim and is very against Catholicism. She was very interested in taking some of our materials on the Church and the Eucharist. Our team members had a very gentle and supportive conversation with her. They also discussed a recent Matt Fradd video they had all seen about a Muslim man’s conversion to the Catholic Church. We gave her information about our parish and offered to talk with her more if she was interested.
Praised be Jesus Christ!