Tonyyyyyyyyy

We are at Aubrey and Deanna's today.....and I almost feel like I am at home.

Well, I met up with Tony later that night. He was still at the coffee shop after dinner, so I joined him outside. I began to read my book and he took an interest in one of them and was skimming it. About 10 minutes into it, he stopped and asked, "What do you think about the Holy Spirit?" I was like.. CHECKA WHAT?! Where the heck did that come from? First, I tried to get him to tell me what he thought. I don't think he understood me. All he could do was nod and say he was Catholic. Dang it... that didn't go anywhere.

I am usually totally against the flat out "Who is Jesus to you?" type "evangelizing... but I had such a heavy heart. I mean... he asked about the Holy Spirit.. it's not like it would be COMPLETELY random. So I simply asked, "Since you asked about the Holy Spirit, let me ask, what do you think about Jesus?" All I got was a nod. SHOOT! Not what I was going for. I asked again, I think I even wrote it out this time. He said, "Same." He explained to me that he was baptized as a baby, that he grew up in church, and Jesus was the same. This was definitly not getting anywhere. The language was not this much of a problem earlier...why is it now? So I did the only thing I could think of... I went to Scripture. We looked at different pieces of scripture, some in the Gospels, some in Romans. And we simply discussed it. I basically laid out the gospel for him. He understood, but not completely.

So I asked him if he had a Bible of his own. He said yes. We made plans to meet the next day, same place, same table, same coffee shop, same time. We would read through a bit of John and discuss it.

Come the next day, I didn't feel like it. (I will get into that in another post) But I met Tony at 5 on the dot, same table, same coffee shop. When I first sat down, he gave me a keychain he had bought with the letter "A" on it... Well that was nice. Then, he pulled a T-shirt out of his bag. See, he coaches a basketball team at the YWCA in uptown Minneapolis. I am not totally sure, but I think the shirt was a gift. If I am expected to play, we are going to have some problems.

He also got out a Bible, and we opened up to John. We read through the first two chapters and discussed it a bit. Then, he kept asking me questions about the differences in Protestants and Catholics. When I tried to tell him that it didnt matter, he refused to take my attempt to dodge it. Somehow, though, we got off the topic, but had lost anything we had going with John.

As I was leaving, I grabbed the key chain and shirt. He insisted I also take the Bible. It was a Catholic Bible, and he said he already had one and knew that I didn't. I am continuing to pray for Tony.. and I ask that you do too. Not because he claims to be a Catholic...that's not the problem here (please don't hear me wrong). He just has a skewed idea of Christ... one that is mixed with church attendance and baptism, not one of living life to its fullest.