Daytona 500 Witnessing

Our original plan was to head to Daytona to witness on Saturday and Sunday, but we were not able to get everything done that we had to accomplish before we could leave until about 10:30 Saturday night.  We started for Daytona, but as Billy had only gotten about 2 hrs of sleep the night before, he got super sleepy and had to pull over at a grocery store in DeLand to take a nap.  After he turned the bus off and was getting ready to lay down, we saw a car stop, circle and then park by the bus and a man got out.  He came to the bus and asked Billy if he could talk with him. He had a lot of Bible questions and Billy ended up talking with him outside the bus until about 3:30am! Billy was plenty awake after that, so we drove to Daytona and parked in a church parking lot where he got a few hours of sleep.

We met up with a fellowlabourer at about 7:30 and he and Billy headed out to the crowd. The girls and I stayed behind until I could get everyone fed, dressed, diapers changed, etc. We didn’t get out until about 10:30. The older girls were very excited to hand out tracts (they love doing it!).  So fun seeing their excitement.

The Daytona 500 brings SO many people to Daytona! We try to go every year to hand out gospel tracts, hold scripture signs, the men preach and we sometimes sing together.

There were quite a few people (70+!) from a local Baptist church also handing out tracts, preaching and holding gospel signs. Here is a photo of some of them on the walk bridge. I think you could easily have hundreds of saints witnessing here and still not have enough to reach the hundreds of thousands of people that come! One of the street preachers we talked to said that they were the only three people preaching on Saturday and during the week.  While Sunday is probably the biggest day, there are tons of people there all week.

There were several airplanes flying with advertisement banners and one said “JESUS IS COMING BE PREPARED”, but I was unable to get a clear picture of it.

Helping Daddy with the sign at 5 months old.

We were very blessed and encouraged by our friend that joined us again this year.  I think he got hooked on preaching with the megaphone now! He didn’t think he wanted to do it, but once he tried, he found it wasn’t as difficult as he expected and thoroughly enjoyed it! It was fun hearing how he would use the lyrics of the rock music/noise that was blaring to show people their need for God and salvation. He had many good Bible verses to share with people and did a great job. Thank you brother!

 

Billy always has a great time talking with some of the other street preachers there. We were able to sit down with the fellows below after the race started and the crowd was mostly gone.  Always good to learn from others how they do it (even if you learn how NOT to do it!). Billy was able to share some of the things he has learned – including using baptism when talking with many religious people and how when they don’t rightly divide and they get confused about the ‘one baptism’.

I had the opportunity to talk with a fellow who approached me and asked if I was with ‘them’ (some other preachers). I told him I was not, and he said, “Good, because what they are preaching is wrong.” He said they were “cussing at people” and saying that “God hates sinners”. He also said they said people have to be good to be saved. I was able to agree with him that that was wrong, and show him some of the reasons that people could come to those conclusions. I explained how when people do not understand the mystery that was revealed to the Apostle Paul, they take passages from the gospel of the circumcision and try to apply it to us today and therefore get very confused.  Putting the bible in a blender, or randomly choosing what can apply does not work! It must be taken in context and with understanding of WHO it was written to/for. This made a lot of sense to him. He told me “I have been a Christian since I could crawl”. I tried to make sure that he understood that being saved today was belief and trust in the finished work of Christ on the cross.

Oh yeah, as I was talking to this man, ‘security’ came and told me my sign was too large and I couldn’t be in that area with it.  However, when I asked how small the sign needed to be, he couldn’t tell me what size sign was OK and changed it to that I couldn’t have a sign at all in that area.  It was OK because the girls and I had already handed out a few tracts there and walked the whole area with our sign on the stroller several times and were about to cross over to the other side of the road anyway.

 

Headed back after the race with the Goodyear blimp overhead. We made a couple of laps with the Bible-On-Wheels as it’s the largest scripture sign around! Lots of eyes to read it there for sure.

Afterwards we met a man who had some tires for sale on Craigslist that we needed for the bus. Much better spending $50 for two tires that are in pretty good condition over almost $200 each new!