For those who haven’t been to pageant before, the evening begins with all of the Christians meeting on the streets at 6pm for 20 minutes of worship followed by about 10 minutes of prayer. After leaving our prayer huddles, we breakout for fellowship and conversations with Mormons on the streets.
Right after prayer on the last night of pageant, I immediately noticed a guy “roaming” around listening to witnessing conversations. This guy, about 26-ish, was obviously curious, so I engaged him in conversation. Later, I discovered he had already talked with another missionary (Rob) right before I met him, and had been to the 3 previous pageant nights, but had yet to actually see the performance! Instead of watching the pageant, he had been talking with Christians every night on the streets.
As I began conversing with Jason, I discovered he was an RM (Returned Missionary) and a super nice guy who wanted to talk about faith. I walked him through a tract and he quickly got the point of the discussion that Joseph Smith had boasted of doing more than even Jesus had done. We talked about what God thinks of boasting (Proverbs 16:5) which led us into a discussion of the reliability of scriptures. At this time, Kim, was standing next to me. She broke out the tract we call the “Plain and Precious Truths,” and we walked him through the impossibility of his claims. We showed him how absurd it would have been for the “monks” to have made all of these changes and corrupted the scriptures. This I think really ROCKED HIM!
Not wanting to seem shaken by our answers to his questions and showing proof to support reality, Jason tries the “Ace-in-the-hole” for Mormons which is the Trinity. Here again, Kim pulls out another piece of paper that has the Trinity diagram and she runs through that with him. Then, I follow up with yet another Trinity pamphlet that shows the Trinity concept in scripture. Here again, Jason is putting up a little defense and brings more questions which leads into yet another tract, then another pamphlet, then another. As you can see, we unloaded everything we had in our bags.
For over 3 hours we poured out Truth to this young man, and he was so thirsty to hear God speak through us. The time passed so quickly that we had no idea the pageant performance was about to start until we were startled by an announcement over the loud speaker. As Jason scrambled to get all of his literature organized, the poor guy looked like a paperboy as he walked through the gate and to his seat. People…God allowed us hours of uninterrupted witnessing to Jason on the streets where hundreds of people were walking by, talking, and even breaking up conversations. God knew what Jason needed that night… and he received the TRUTH! Praise God!
It’s likely that we may never know this side of Glory whether Jason accepted Jesus. Our departing words of encouragement to him were IT’S ALL ABOUT JESUS JASON, IT’S ALL ABOUT JESUS. LET’S LIVE BY HIS TEACHINGS AND HIS WORD!