Today I was up, not feeling well, but ready anyways to take on the challenge of surveying. I got to pair up with Stacey, she is in the core team, and her son Dalton, he was hilarious. Her husband Mark couldn’t make it, so it worked out perfectly, since I am the only single so far on the core team.

We all met up in a neighborhood and then spread out. First house we get to, the lady says she is on her way out, so she can’t answer any questions…likely excuse…actually probably about 20 min. later we saw her drive away.

The first house that we actually got to talk to someone, low and behold, he is an atheist. But it turned out to be good conversation. He was really nice and answered all of our questions. One question we ask is “If you were to give advice to a pastor planting a church in this community what would it be?” His answer was to speak more about the positives and not be negative all the time. One crazy thing is that he grew up Mormon and his wife grew up catholic, which was the exact same dynamic in my early childhood with my parents, so I was able to pick up on some of the reasons behind his answers, like why he is put off so much my organized religion. Thankfully Stacey led this conversation. But he did give us his contact information, so that was surprising.

The next two people we got contact information for were one’s I talked to. Two mom’s. One was really nice. She had a great accent from London. She could definitely be a possible person to come to the church. When I asked her what she would look for in a church if she was to go she said “Christian,” so that is cool. The other mom wanted to see diversity if she was looking for a church. And she also said that the pastor should speak more about love and not just what is in the Bible. At this answer I almost went into a deeper question about what is actually in the Bible, but I refrained. And this brings me to a side note.

Between the atheist guy and this second mom it is sad to be reminded just how much damage has been done to Christianity. It is really sad “religion” has made Jesus and God into these judge’s and rulers that just give you a bunch of laws and standards you need to live by and a list of things that you should not do. And if you are doing them, you get attacked and the book thrown at you. Christianity is the exact opposite of all of this. It is so clear that if one is a Christian that they recognize this lifelong mission and work as much as one can to change this perception and truly communicate who Christ is. This is definitely my mission.

Well, I am not feeling well again…this is the story of my life for the past 5 days, so until next time…PEACE OUT!