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 Elfriede Volk |
 The tent was filled each evening, with approximately 300 people. I was told that double that number were listening from nearby houses. |
 The children loved hearing the stories. |
 New believers in the Dammerfalls church. Stanford is first on the left. Eight people were baptized after one week, and another group the next Sabbath. |
 The "Golden Girls". The two other seniors at the meetings wanted their picture taken with me. |
LEFT BEHIND AT DAMMERFALLS
June 20 2015 / ShareHim in SWUC Zimbabwe Partner Project, May. 15 - May. 30 '15 #665by Elfriede Volk
Personal Testimony of Elfriede Volk.
LEFT BEHIND
I miss my Bible. I had it for years, and spent weeks selecting passages for Bible studies, color-coding them, then finding the texts, highlighting and cross-referencing them to others on the same topic. The Bible had traveled around the world with me, but was left behind in Dammerfalls, Zimbabwe.
ShareHim campaigns usually begin on Friday evenings, but in Zimbabwe it was different. We had 5 or 10 minutes Sabbath morning to introduce ourselves, perhaps a short vespers presentation on Sabbath afternoon/evening, and then began the meetings Sunday evening.
In introducing myself I just gave the vital statistics—name, age, number of children and grandchildren. Then I told the people about Steve. Newly married, Steve had been celebrating with his bride and wanted to show her how fast he could go on his motorbike. But with senses dulled by alcohol, he did not see the taxi entering the intersection and hit it full-speed.
Police told the paramedics, “Don’t bother with the guy. He’s a goner. Just try to save the lady.” Long after the ambulance left, Steve sat up and the police put in another frantic call, this time for Steve. He lived another 60 years and became an Adventist at 80. Shortly before he died, he said that his biggest regret was that he had not become one sooner.
“Too often,” I told the audience, “we are like the police. We are too ready to write people off as spiritually dead, and concentrate our efforts on those who are more respectable. But Jesus came to seek and save those who were lost, the outcasts, the hopeless cases. He came to give them life, and give it more abundantly. So invite your friends, your neighbors, your family members to these meetings, so that they can have this more abundant life too.”
When I arrived Sunday evening, I began setting out the chairs that had been stacked up in one corner of the tent. A man who had been sitting there came over and introduced himself as Stanford.
“Are you one of the elders?” I asked.
“No. Actually, I just surrendered to God now, since you came. Please pray for me.”
I assured him that I would. Later that week I saw Stanford reading a Bible. “It’s not mine,” he said. “I don’t have one, but I borrowed one from a friend. I want to be baptized before you leave. And I want to be able to tell others what the Bible teaches.”
I took my Bible out of my case and brought it over to show him. “This Bible will be yours when I leave,” I said. “The page glued onto the flyleaf shows some of the studies you can do with people, and gives the first texts of those studies. When you look a text up, it will give you the next text in the study, and so on.”
A young friend of Stanford’s came over to look at the marked Bible too. “Oh, I would love to have a Bible like that,” he said. “Then I could teach my sister what I am learning here.”
“Perhaps you and Stanford could teach her together,” I suggested.
Yes, I miss my Bible, but I am glad it is being put to good use. In the meantime I am looking for another one that I can mark up to leave behind at my next ShareHim campaign.
I miss my Bible. I had it for years, and spent weeks selecting passages for Bible studies, color-coding them, then finding the texts, highlighting and cross-referencing them to others on the same topic. The Bible had traveled around the world with me, but was left behind in Dammerfalls, Zimbabwe.
ShareHim campaigns usually begin on Friday evenings, but in Zimbabwe it was different. We had 5 or 10 minutes Sabbath morning to introduce ourselves, perhaps a short vespers presentation on Sabbath afternoon/evening, and then began the meetings Sunday evening.
In introducing myself I just gave the vital statistics—name, age, number of children and grandchildren. Then I told the people about Steve. Newly married, Steve had been celebrating with his bride and wanted to show her how fast he could go on his motorbike. But with senses dulled by alcohol, he did not see the taxi entering the intersection and hit it full-speed.
Police told the paramedics, “Don’t bother with the guy. He’s a goner. Just try to save the lady.” Long after the ambulance left, Steve sat up and the police put in another frantic call, this time for Steve. He lived another 60 years and became an Adventist at 80. Shortly before he died, he said that his biggest regret was that he had not become one sooner.
“Too often,” I told the audience, “we are like the police. We are too ready to write people off as spiritually dead, and concentrate our efforts on those who are more respectable. But Jesus came to seek and save those who were lost, the outcasts, the hopeless cases. He came to give them life, and give it more abundantly. So invite your friends, your neighbors, your family members to these meetings, so that they can have this more abundant life too.”
When I arrived Sunday evening, I began setting out the chairs that had been stacked up in one corner of the tent. A man who had been sitting there came over and introduced himself as Stanford.
“Are you one of the elders?” I asked.
“No. Actually, I just surrendered to God now, since you came. Please pray for me.”
I assured him that I would. Later that week I saw Stanford reading a Bible. “It’s not mine,” he said. “I don’t have one, but I borrowed one from a friend. I want to be baptized before you leave. And I want to be able to tell others what the Bible teaches.”
I took my Bible out of my case and brought it over to show him. “This Bible will be yours when I leave,” I said. “The page glued onto the flyleaf shows some of the studies you can do with people, and gives the first texts of those studies. When you look a text up, it will give you the next text in the study, and so on.”
A young friend of Stanford’s came over to look at the marked Bible too. “Oh, I would love to have a Bible like that,” he said. “Then I could teach my sister what I am learning here.”
“Perhaps you and Stanford could teach her together,” I suggested.
Yes, I miss my Bible, but I am glad it is being put to good use. In the meantime I am looking for another one that I can mark up to leave behind at my next ShareHim campaign.