Soul winning up here is always a wild card, not only with regard to whom you are going to meet but also with regard to how you’re going to meet them. On our monthly Ministry-Involvement Sunday, our plan was to knock doors as usual with our door-knocking team, but those plans got dampened by rain. Having to make a quick decision, I sent our group to a high-rise apartment building that I knew would be open for us. This was where I met Isa, a Muslim man from Iraq. He was very courteous when he asked me and my soul-winning partner, “What is the best religion?” He challenged us on our belief in three Gods, a common misconception Muslims have about our faith, and I did my best to give him a Bible answer. Knowing the answer would take longer than we had time for, I asked him if I could come back sometime to discuss this topic. We emailed back and forth a few times and got a meeting set up for me to visit him. Our meeting got cancelled, unfortunately, due to a family matter he had to settle back in Iraq; we’ve recently reconnected as of this writing, and I plan to meet with him soon. Please pray for me as I try to witness to this man. This man is a devout Muslim, who chose Islam because he considers it to be true, not because he inherited his religion like so many do. He is open to talking about our opposing beliefs, which I hope will someday lead to him believing on the Lord Jesus Christ. His name, Isa, is the Arabic word for Jesus. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Isa could truly know his own namesake for Who He really is?!
Three of our recently saved young people have gotten baptized since I last wrote to you. Tony, Paul, and Jason, along with some members of their families, got baptized together on October 3. It was a very exciting and moving service. Tony and Paul are nearly finished with our discipleship series and are doing well. Jason, our teenager from Iran, has been going through the same discipleship materials, and he’s roughly halfway finished. These one-on-one meetings have brought up many questions, ranging from “What is a saint?” to “Can I lose my salvation?” Their questions are sometimes comical, while at other times, they are eternally significant. It’s so awesome and inspiring to see new converts grow and to see them learning things for the first time that I’ve known for a long time. These young men have even started going soul winning with our Saturday soul-winning groups to varying degrees. Please pray for these young men, as well as our other teenagers. We have some great young people. I don’t have the time and space to tell you about all of them, but they are amazing to work with. We need wisdom and grace to help them, so please pray for us. Our teenIMPACT program has started once again, and at the moment, we’re covering godly character traits. Soon we’ll move into a new topic that came from some of the questions about the Bible that I was getting from our newer teens. I’m currently planning some lessons to teach them things like How We Got the Bible, What Is Inspiration, What Is Preservation, Why Use the KJV, etc. I’m excited about the prospect of this series. Pray for our young people to grow in their faith and knowledge.
We’ll soon be taking a trip back to the States to visit our families around Christmas, and we’ll have a limited amount of openings to stop in for a personal update to your church if you’re in or near the Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina, area or the Southeast Louisiana region. Also, would you pray about joining us for a missions trip? Pastor Johnston has suggested some dates to us that would give your church a chance to help us in reaching our area for Christ. These are some of our big outreach days: May 27-31, 2020; June 24-28, 2020; and August 5-9, 2020. It would be great to show you what we’ve been writing about.
Pressing toward the mark,
Brian Hebert