The meetings by David Gates at the Spanish-speaking church in Richmond Virginia from September 14-20 are over now, and i think went off well overall, even tho i didn’t understand hardly anything – ha! It was fun to pick up a few Spanish words tho, and the refrain from the them song is still going thru my mind: “Mas alla del sol” (Far, over there, the sun). Compared to Japanese it is super easy, as many words can be picked out of a conversation just because they are closely related to English.
About 80-100 came every nite, and we heard some good testimonies from several individuals during the meetings saying that they feel a stronger need to prepare for Jesus’ coming. I handled one of the video cameras, and it was kind of hard to keep standing on a metal chair for 2 hours or more gazing at a tiny screen, trying to keep the head and sometimes body too not in the center of the screen where it would look unnatural, but in one of the “thirds” on usually the right side (i ran the camera on the right facing left), or on the left (when he would stretch over and look at the people to the far left of him. But it was fun too in a strange way, and i seem to be getting better at keeping the camera steady.
The pastor’s wife offered to proofread the Spanish 1858gc book and one other family offered their daughter’s services to translate the Portuguese one, but i know that offering other people’s time is usually not a profitable thing to do. One man who runs an evangelistic radio station talked about the “original books” with authority, which surprised me, and again gave me a little spark to keep at it for “there are those who care”. 🙂
The people there were quite nice, if a little disorganized and loud, they even gave me some donations, of which i’m sharing with others. God is good. It was amazing to see a pastor who really seemed to care about his flock, and wants to receive advice from others about what to do to make his church come more into line with the inspired counsel 🙂
We were able to give an overview Bible study to the lady at the counter of the Quality Inn where we stayed at. America is so amazing to be able to have sincere discussions openly with people like this. The pastor is really evangelistic minded, and was always talking to people and trying to open doors to them. That is one big area where i need to improve, because my nature is to shy away from people, and keep my nose stuck in a book somewhere.
The only real problem i could tell, was the overall lack of solemnness. This is not just a problem with what i saw in Richmond, this is something that is all thru the ranks of us people who proclaim to have the last message of mercy to a dying world. Many times we like to saw joking things etc. that are not true, and then just write it off as a “joke”, and have a good laugh about it. Is this the way to act to help prepare a character to stand before a holy God?
God’s ministers should give the straight, solemn message, without trying to tickle the funny bone. It hit me with force, how different the atmosphere was during the Awakening meetings in the 1960s with what we have in the pulpits now. It was so earnest, solemn, and the people were poring over the words of God to see if these things were so. Where is that today? I don’t know of anyone on the planet doing it consistently, altho, of course i haven’t heard every SDA pastor speak!