Saturday morning, Ben and I went downtown to Falls Park for evangelism. The Reedy River Run was just completing as we arrived, so the park was full of people gathered for the event.
There were also crates everywhere of fresh fruit - apples, oranges, bananas - gatorade and bottled water.
Ben took his kids with him down into the park area where many families were enjoying the beautiful weather on picnic blankets. I stayed near the top end of the park and witnessed to anyone I saw unoccupied.
After about an hour, most of the runners and their families had left and the sponsors were clearing out the refreshments. I saw a young man struggling to carry a crate of gatorade and a plastic bag of more gatorade. I offered to help him carry them and took the plastic bag. By the time we had reached the top of the stairs, he was out of breath, so I took the crate, too. As we walked up Main Street, he said, "People saw me carrying this stuff all through the park, but no one offered to help me, except you."
I said, "That's what Jesus would have done."
"Yes, sir," he said. "He would have."
I asked him if he were a Christian and he said he was. Since we live in the buckle of the Bible belt, I never leave it at that. Everyone thinks they're a Christian. I shared with him my personal testimony, emphasizing sin, righteousness, and judgment. When we reached our destination and I got to set my burdens down, he was very grateful and I gave him a couple million dollar bills and asked him to pass them along to his friends. He said he would.
Then I noticed as I was returning to the park, I had been watched. You see, the young man was black. For some strange reason, a white man helping a young black man carry a crate of gatorade still attracts attention. It also let me put many tracts in many hands on the way back to the park.
One set of hands were in an SUV that came to park beside me on the side of the road. The passenger window was down, so I just thrust a million dollars through the window and said, "Hey, take some of these!"
When I got back to Ben, the young man I had just handed the money to in the SUV came running up to me. Then I noticed the cross around his neck. "Hey, man! Where did you get these? My mom works at a ministry where they use a lot of tracts, but I've never seen any like these!"
I handed him a few more and showed him the web address on the bill for ordering.
At this point, Ben was ready to leave as his kids were getting tired. I told him I would take one more walk through the park and then I would be going myself. I found some teenagers and a few adult takers. As I came back to the top of the park to leave, the young man who requested more tracts for his mother was helping his mother and friends collect some of the fruit crates to take back for their ministry. His friend asked me if I wanted a crate of bananas. I said, "Sure," and started carrying them back to my car. Thankfully, I met up with Ben and he helped me carry them.
These were the longest, biggest, yellowest bunches of bananas I'd ever seen. I think we ended up with 8 to 10 bunches each after we split the crate.
As Ben said, it was a fruitful day.