First zip code commitment

Today I had lunch with the pastor of First Baptist Church Hebron located in Carrollton, Tx. We discussed how we can partner together in reaching the city with the gospel. Th pastor explained that his churches vision is o reach each household in the zip code where their church is located, 75010. He believes this is about 10,000 households. They plan to reach about 2500 of them this year. Please keep this church in prayer as they set out on this vision the Lord has given them.

There are four other zip codes in Carrollton: 75006, 75007, 75008 and 75011. Please pray that the Lord will raise up leaders to take the Gospel to the rest of these zip codes.

Please pray for how you will be involved. Is the Lord leading you to take the Gospel door to door to each household on your block, in your neighborhood, in your zip code or in your city?  Don't live in Carrollton? That's okay! What's not start in your own city. Please let me know how the Lord is leading you.

Brrrr...

Last summer, my wife had gone to the Trader Days in McKinney with a couple of her friends. She told me that there was a booth there with some Muslims sharing about Islam with people. We decided it was a good idea to go back so that I could talk with these men. I spoke with them for 20 minutes or so, but it was nearing the end of the day when I got to talk to them. I gave one of them my card so that we could talk more later. However, I've never heard from them since.

At another booth, I meet Wally. He had a booth sharing the Gospel using the Eye Test and the Way of the Master. Wally is also involved with Extreme Missionary Adventure. We exchanged contact information and agreed to keep in touch so we could do ministry together. Over the past couple of months, Wally and I have talked several times. He is now teaching Way of the Master Basic Training at his church. Once the class is instructed, he wants to be able to take the members out door to door so they can use what they have learned.

Wally and I agreed to meet on Saturday morning. Little did we know it would be one of the coldest days in Dallas this winter. Wally came to my house and we had some good fellowship and a cup of coffee before we headed out. As we walked down the alley from my house to the street, we had to be careful as the water in the alley had formed a thin sheet of ice. I shared with Wally my experiences going door to door. I told him how you could get any response from people not being home, to those that would allow you to share the Gospel. We experienced all of that in a short time.

In the first ten houses, nearly no one was home. This really surprised us since we figured the cold weather would have kept people home. We eventually were able to have three one on one conversations with people. At one house we had a good conversation with the woman that lives there. She readily admitted to breaking the commandments by dishonoring her mom and dad, stealing and lying. However, she said that when she is judged, "it would be based on the whole body of work of her life." We explained to her that in a court room a judge does not do that. She agreed. However, she did not connect the dots to God. At that, she said it was too cold to continue the conversation so I gave her a "Why Christianity?" tract.

The last conversation was with a Catholic man. I asked him "as a Catholic, what do you think happens when you die?" He then explained to me how he hoped his good works would be enough get him to heaven. I explained to him difference between what he believes and the Biblical Gospel that says you must repent of your sins and trust solely in Jesus for salvation. He also took a tract.

We visited 26 houses, had 3 one on one conversations, got 3 prayer requests and gathered 19 food items. This brings the total number of houses visited to 663 with 176 one on one conversations. I have now collected 110 prayer requests and 588 food items.

Thanks for your continued prayer and support.

Are you ready to start going door to door in your neighborhood? Could you commit to sharing the Gospel with everyone on your street? Everyone on your block? Everyone in your zip code? Everyone in your city? Pray about it. If God leads you to get started then please contact me so we can discuss it and add you to the door to door map.

Why Christianity?

As I have been going door to door, I've handed out a lot of tracts and booklets. I've been praying about what other resources to provide people. So I ordered copies of Why Christianity on DVD from Living Waters. When ordered in bulk (10 or more) you can get these for just $2 a each! I've been carrying these with me for the last couple of times out going door to door. Today I was able to give away the first two copies. 


The first DVD went to Andrew. He is an agnostic. His dad was a Buddhist and his mom is Roman Catholic. Andrew was not sure if there is enough evidence to believe in God. I talked to him about creation and the evidence that the Bible manuscripts are true. Then I took him to the Law and walked him through the good test. He admitted that he had lied, stolen, blasphemed God and lusted. He agreed that if God exists, then he would go to hell.He said that his motto is "live and let live." And I shared with him that that verse agrees with what the Bible says in John 3:19, "And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, andpeople loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil." I offered him the DVD along with a challenge that he needs to decide what is true and not just what he believes. 


Two houses later, I meet Nathan. When I asked him if he believed in God, he said, "I am a Jehovah Witness." Rather than immediately challenging him on who Jesus is, I asked if he would go to heaven and then took him through the Ten Commandments. I reminded him that the command is "to be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect." He admitted to lying and hatred which is murder. When we started to talk about hell, he said, he was busy and needed to go. So I asked if he would watch a DVD and he said he would. So I gave him a copy of Why Christianity too.

I was able to visit 43 other houses. I had 9 other one on one conversations. I gathered four prayer requests. And I collected a whole cart full of food to donate to MetroCrest Social Services.


My Challenge to You
May I challenge you to take the step to go door to door in your neighborhood. Do a food drive. Ask for prayer requests. Then ask if they believe in God. See where the conversation goes and share the Gospel with them. Give them a tract. Or simply leave the tract on the door when they are not home. We never know which will fall on the good soil.

If you live around Dallas, why not come with me sometime soon. Get some hands on experience going door to door, then start doing the same in your neighborhood. If you are not close by, then feel free to contact me, leave a comment or check out the door to door recourses on the Bezeugen web site and this BLOG for guidance on getting started. Once you decide to cover your neighborhood, city or zip code, let me know and I'll add you to the map. May God be glorified as we share the Gospel door to door!

New Years Day door to door evangelism

On New Years Day, I started off the year by going door to door in my neighborhood. I was not sure how it would be received given that it was a holiday. However, I ended up having some great one on one conversations, gathered prayer requests and collected the largest amount of food in a single day yet!

The picture at the right shows the wagon full of food that I collected. That's right - my cart has become too small to carry the generous donations of food, so I am now using my wagon (that I've had since I was a kid) to carry the food home.

The table below shows the progress over the past three door to door outings as well as the totals since I started going door to door.

date	houses	1 on 1's	prayer     requests	food          items
12-Dec	35	13	11	86
26-Dec	23	11	7	56
1-Jan	69	17	7	96
total's	537	150	94	499

I would like to share one an exciting thing that happened when I went door to door on December 26. I was going to spend two hours going door to door in my neighborhood and then meet some friends in Dallas for Project Ezra, witnessing and tract distribution before the Dallas Mavericks game. At the last house that I went to I had the pleasure of speaking with two believers. We had a great time of fellowship and we talked about evangelism. The man said, "I wonder why God orchestrated this meeting?" I replied, "probably to encourage you to share your faith more." I then realized I was late for getting home to eat lunch before going to the basketball game. I thanked them both for their time and headed home. When I got home, I was eating lunch when a car pulled up and a man came walking up to my door. I answered the door. It was the man I had just been talking too. He said, "are you going to be staying for the game?" I said, "No!" He said, "can I come along with you?" I said, "of course!"

It turns out that from our conversation he felt convicted to join us on our witnessing event. We had a nice time of fellowship and handed out lots of tracts. It was really great for God to show me this other fruit of my door to door efforts that this man not only joined the tract club, but joined us witnessing. And, I expect he will be joining us again in the near future.

Status Update

On Saturday, I visited 35 house, shared the Gospel one on one with 13 people, gathered 11 prayer requests and collected 86 food items. This brings the totals to 445, 122 one on one conversations, 80 prayer requests and 347 food items collected. The map below shows the area covered. The push pin in my house. I use the highlighter to track where I have been. Thanks for your continued prayers for this effort.

Are you ready to get started going door to door? I have created a map to keep track of people going door to door in their community. If you would like to be added to the map as a participant, then please contact me.

A good problem

On Saturday, I went out door to door for two hours. I changed my tactics slightly for this day. Instead of collecting food for MetroCrest, I decided earlier in the week to collect the food for "a family in need." You see, my wifes family has decided that this Christmas rather than exchanging gifts with the adults we would adopt a family in the community and give gifts to them! When we looked at the needs, we realized food was a big one. So, I prayerfully decided to designate the food collected on this trip into the neighborhood to give directly to this family. Instead of my normal "MetroCrest" flyer that I put on my clip board, I made a flyer describing a "Bezeugen Ministries food drive to benefit a family in need in the neighborhood." With that, I set out.

As I proceeded down the street, I was overwhelmed with generous food donations. People were giving more than normally. In the past each house that gave would give a couple (maybe three) cans of food. But, on this day, the bags were coming back with five, six, seven and up to ten cans of food in them. As I continued down the street, I had to stop and rearrange the food in the cart. Then as I went to a couple of more houses, the cart was overflowing again. By this time I was a half a mile from home. I did not want to "waste time" walking back home to put the food away and not be able to stop at any houses since I could not carry any more food. So I called my wife to see if she could come and pick up the food. However, she was not nearby so she could not. I continued on anyway and was sharing the Gospel at each house. Finally, I had so much food that it would not stay in the cart. The cart was full and I had two full bags of food in my hand. And I was a full half mile from home as I came back up the other side of the street. I posted a message to facebook thinking maybe one of my friends could come and pick up the food. However, I got no response.

Finally, as I prayed the Lord lead me to an answer. I had just spoken with a believer on the other side of the street. I went back to their house and told them my delimma. I asked if I could ust leave the food on their porch for an hour and a half and then I would come back for it. They agreed. I lightened my load and proceeded on up the street. Eventually my wife was on her way home and she stopped at that house and picked up the food for me.

On a typical door to door outing, food collections are about 1 can per three houses. On this day, the food collection was nearly three cans per house! After visiting 35 houses, I had collected 86 cans of food to donate to this family. I had also shared the Gospel one on one 13 times and gathered 11 prayer requests.

Please pray for all of the people that I shared the Gospel with that they may come to salvation through Jesus Christ.

How to pray for them if they don't give their name

As I have been going door to door, I take down prayer requests. Some people get added to our prayer list, even if they don't mention a prayer request. How is that, you might ask? If in the course of discussion, it is determined that the person is not a Christian, then I add a prayer request for their salvation. In many of these cases, the person had not given me their name. So, we have ended up with a number of prayer cards that say "Name: not given" or "Name: Unknown". Now God knows who the person is living at such and such an address, so when we pray God knows the need. However, I've found a way to make the pray even more personal. Whitepages.com offers a "reverse lookup!" With reverse lookup you can look up a name based on knowing the address or the phone number. It's not 100 percent - probably due to unlisted and such, but it is at least in the 95 percentile based on searches that I have done. So, next time you are praying over that prayer card where you did not get their name, go look it up in the Whitepages Reverse Lookup!