A Week Of Life With The Owens...

This past week Charity and I stayed with some good friends, the Owens, while the rest of the family went to Pennsylvania. It was unplanned, but it has been a lot of fun. Monday and Tuesday we just hung out with Sally and Hannah.


This is Hannah. Isn't she adorable?!


Wednesday we attended Antioch Bible Baptist for church. Pastor Pawley preached a very good sermon about the Ark and the Altar (from Genesis 8), and it was nice to be able to visit with some friends there.

Thursday evening we headed to Buffalo to preach at the Thursday in The Square concert. When we got there we found out the concert was canceled due to the weather, but we decided to stay and preach anyways. It turned out to be a very good night. Since the concert was canceled you could actually hear when having a conversation with someone! I talked to 2 young people, Paige and Joseph, and they actually had some serious questions. One of them had a catholic background, and asked about the differences between Christianity and Catholicism. After a few minutes of discussing the reality of death and hell, I left them each with a Gospel tract, which they promised to read that evening. During a lot of the evening we had 3 hecklers out on the other side of the street. One of them would come up to Bro. Greg (who was preaching), get in his face, and the other 2 would pull him back. They finally left, but not before hearing the Truth of God's Word! We also had a good discussion with about 10 kids that came up to talk. On of the girls professed to be christian but said that we should not be preaching in public. After about half an hour of discussing the issue with 4 of us out there, we discovered her real problem...she said the Bible was not completely trustworthy, and we couldn't know for sure that it was God's Word.



Friday evening we were planning on going to preach outside another concert in Buffalo, but found out that afternoon it had been postponed as one of the singers had the flu. We went down to where it was supposed to be held anyways, and preached outside for a little while. There were still a few hundred people out there, who hadn't heard that it was canceled.

Saturday we went to a Canal Fest nearby, and preached for a couple hours. Thankfully the Lord held off the rain for a while, and we got a lot of tracts out. Hundreds of people walking by us heard the Gospel preached, and we actually had quite a few people say "Amen" or give us a thumbs-up. Not normal, but a nice change! The event staff did come up and try to tell us we could not be preaching or passing out pamphlets, and they eventually went to the police. An officer came out to talk to Greg, but there was really nothing they could do. He tried telling us we needed a permit, and even said that preaching there was like yelling outside someone's home, and they had the right to tell us to leave. Of course, this is not true (public sidewalk is protected free speech area), and after a few minutes of discussion, the officer walked off.


Today we went back to Antioch for church. It was, again, a very good service. It is a blessing every time we are able to visit a like-minded church, and hear some good preaching. (Of course a lot of the time we don't have to worry about the preaching, since Dad preaches at most of the churches we visit!)

Tomorrow we will be back home with the rest of the family. We will miss the Owens, but it will be nice to see the family again!