Open Air: In Which Nothing Is Revealed

Last Wednesday in Manchester was thankfully dry, bearing in mind the rain that was fairly prominent during the week. It was, however, rather cold. We were also grateful that the noisy busker from the previous week was absent and we were able to preach as normal. I gave out a fairly typical number of tracts. Some interactions of note were as follows.

• We were approached by a lady who had already received a Bible from us. She wanted something smaller to carry about with her, so she received a John's Gospel and some other literature.

• We spoke for a while with a young Polish student. She gratefully received a Bible because she had left her own at home in Carlisle. She was looking for a good church so I mentioned a few. This is a bit of a problem; our knowledge of the current state of churches in Manchester is limited, so it is difficult to know which ones to recommend.

• A young man was interested in receiving some Christian literature. Among other items, he was given Blanchard's “Jesus: Dead or Alive”, “Journey Into Life” and a John's Gospel.

• While we were in the process of slightly relocating because of the arrival of the air monitoring technician, a lady wearing a headscarf looked at our posters and came towards us. She was holding out in front of her in both hands a book, possibly a Bible. Then she spoke. “Thus saith the Lord God of Israel.” I looked at her rather blankly, expecting her to continue. She repeated the same remark, so I thought that she wanted me to react. The response, “What saith he?” came to mind but I decided to stick to my own language and asked, “What does he say?” She replied, “You have interrupted the prophetess so she departs” and promptly spun around, leaving at some pace.

Many thanks to Stephen for his excellent summary of last week’s Open Air, which is most welcome, since I’ve hardly had time to think about the Newsletter until now. I’m rather taken with his account of the self-styled prophetess. More jokes there than you can shake a stick at, I’m sure. Perhaps he should have offered to cross her palm with silver and… no, I think I’ll just let that one hang in the air, or else someone with no sense of humour is bound to be emailing me within the hour…

More pertinently, please pray for any or all of those mentioned above, if our Lord puts it upon your heart to do so. Feel free to join us next Wednesday or to support us in prayer, if you possibly can.

Every blessing!