Thursday, September 24, 2026

We all met at the church for today’s soul winning session, and Nathan drove us to the Taylor Berry neighborhood near Utah Avenue.

Not long after Robert and I got out of the van, a woman began yelling at us from a second-story window: “No soliciting!” followed by a few other choice words. I ignored it for a little while, but finally stopped, looked up, and told her, “Be quiet.”

She yelled back, “No, you be quiet!”

So I said, “No, you be quiet. Let’s argue like little kids. No, you be quiet. No, you be quiet.”

She started laughing, although the heckling continued as we walked away.

Our first stop was Trinda’s apartment. Her son answered the door and invited us inside while Trinda was cooking dinner. We visited with her for a few minutes before heading back out.

We began trying apartments nearby and quickly noticed several invitations from Shawnee Baptist Church. When another church has recently covered an area, it can make the doors a little tougher, and that may also have explained some of the “no soliciting” frustration we had already encountered.

Robert and I crossed over to the houses on Arcade Avenue. At only the second home we visited, a man was willing to listen and received the Gospel. Thank God!

We continued down Arcade Avenue. There were a lot of people out walking, but very few were interested in hearing the Gospel. We also met several people who spoke Spanish.

One encounter especially stood out. Robert tried speaking with a man who was clearly intoxicated, but he wasn’t interested. I noticed two women sitting on the porch and crossed the street to speak with them. One woman pointed me toward the other, so I asked her what she believed a person had to do to get to heaven.

She began quoting Acts 2:38. I asked her what she meant by “repent,” and she explained it as stopping sin. I asked her whether she still sinned. She insisted that she did not. When I asked again, she became very loud, repeated that she did not sin, became angry, and went inside.

Later, another man stopped at the same house. His name was Juan. He had also been drinking and did not want to hear the whole Gospel, but he allowed me to give him about five minutes of it. As we left, he thanked me for talking with him.

I could be wrong, but the lady who thought she was perfect and without sin may be staying at a home that distributes drugs to people in the area. I have met a couple people this week who believe they don't sin. That doesn't happen often, but this week has been a more frustrating week for me with the Gospel. When someone doesn't believe they do any wrong, that frustrates me. Even many Baptist will preach the Gospel and tell others they are sinners, but they believe themselves to be good. This is a very dangerous place to be at.

Robert and I covered both sides of Arcade Avenue all the way down toward Taylor Boulevard. We encountered more intoxicated people during this session than I can remember encountering on any other soul winning day. Even around the businesses near the intersection, we continued trying to speak with people, but most were not interested.

Eventually, we made the roughly ten-minute walk back toward the van, continuing to speak with people along the way.

Near the van, Nathan was able to get another man to receive the Gospel. Parker also found Juanita, a past church visitor whom Nathan had tried to visit earlier. I spoke with her for a while, and she told me that her daughter was in the hospital after suffering a stroke. We added her daughter to our prayer list.

Nathan also told me that he had been able to preach the Gospel to many children at William Harrison Park near where we had parked.

It was a challenging area with plenty of distractions, rejection, and some unusual encounters, but it was still a great day of soul winning.

Five soul winners went out, and by the end of the session we had a total of eleven salvations.

Praise God for every person who heard the Gospel and every soul that believed.