[kp]

Great job, Joseph! Sounds like you had some good practice with telling your testimony. I would like to challenge you, though, to share your testimony with someone outside your family. Although I wish I had practiced more with family before sharing my testimony, I found it very beneficial to share it with someone I didn’t know as well. It will give you a better perspective for how you would like to present your story and how others view it. And who knows maybe it will have an impact on that person (since your family members are part of your story they already know it and are less impacted by its re-telling). Good luck! And God bless (I’ll pray for you on your journey to becoming an evangelist).

[kp]

It’s funny because just a week before this lesson I had a new convert to the faith who was a family friend ask me what my story was. I was able to share but looking back I wish I didn’t get side tracked with details that didn’t matter. So when this lesson came, I wrote out my testimony with the Before, During and After portions as instructed and tried to make it more purposeful. I thought of a friend I could share my story with that is easy to talk to and open about his faith yet is actually not a Catholic. I felt like God wanted me to share my testimony with him since I just so happen to be getting together with him the next week. I prayed for him ahead of time and thought over the parts of my story again as a practice run before I met with him (I was afraid I’d forget a key part). I hoped some part of my story would encourage him to consider looking into the Catholic faith. When we got together, it went alright. He was very attentive and listened/encouraged me as I talked. Although I don’t think any big conversion came about, it did open things up to talk about the faith and he shared his story at my request. The conversation was able to naturally shift to him and we talked at length about where he was at in his faith life and how he got there. Looking back I think I would like to tweak my story a bit and make sure there is a more obvious theme running through it. I believe this will help the testimony to have more impact. As my friend talked I couldn’t help but think HE would be a really good evangelist one day. Later that night he messaged me saying he wanted to think over his own testimony some more and could give me a better one next time. So although I didn’t feel like I did so great, at least I helped someone else take a step toward becoming a better evangelist. 🙂

[kp]

Wow, your testimony about putting the Kerygma into practice here is very inspiring. I, myself, am nervous about sharing it with others so I found your post very encouraging. Do you mind if I ask you what your Kerygma is? Sounds like you kept it short & simple (yet still impactful).
-Katie

[kp]

These practical activities are great! They are forcing me to step outside my comfort zone. In addition, I like how they make me put into practice the things that I’ve just learned. I wrote out my version of the Kerygma and thought of 3 or 4 people to share it with (two that I’m comfortable with and two I’m not so close to). So far I shared it with my roommate. She was very involved in FOCUS and had to do something similar years ago so it was helpful to talk to her. This is my Kerygma:
As Christians, we believe God is real; that He is love and that He created us for a relationship with Him. The problem is we do bad stuff; we sin. We hurt other people and sometimes even ourselves and we break our relationship with God. This separates us from Him. But the good news is He doesn’t want us to be separated from Him…so He sent His son, Jesus, to take away our sins by dying for us on the cross. Jesus gives us new life; eternal life. In order for us to receive this gift though we have to turn away from our sins and the bad things we’ve been doing, be baptized and become His disciples. We need to try to live a good life.
Add on: Jesus established the Catholic Church to teach in His name and make this message known and to help lead us to live good lives.
Her feedback: It was very basic. It was too much of just listing facts. She said to focus more on the human relationship with God. When she wrote a Kerygma, her was more in a story form.

[kp]

I will pray for your co-workers, Harlan. I hope since February they have opened up to God a bit more. -Katie

[kp]

I found this practical activity to be a perfect way to step into things. I am used to just reading about my faith or watching videos so I loved how this challenged me to start practicing being an Evangelist. When I was praying for God to bring someone to mind, I thought of my co-worker who was brought up in the Catholic faith & attended Catholic school but was never baptized. I think she fell away from her faith after she got out of school. We get along very well and I have noticed she admires me for how honest and upright I am in different situations as they arise at work. She recently got married to a man who is not Catholic and just had a baby last year. I hope these changes in her life will cause her to think about God more and how she wants to raise her son. As I started to pray for her, I felt the Lord put on my heart the prayer, “May she desire to be baptized, Lord.” She was transferred to a different work location so I no longer see her on a daily basis but I have reached out here & there via text to see how she is doing. I decided as part of this activity (and through prayer) I would drive out to visit her at her new location as a surprise. As I made the long drive down to see her, I prayed for her. Unfortunately, when I arrived her co-workers told me she had left early to pick up her son from daycare. I felt disappointed but offered up the sacrifice for her conversion. I continue to talk to her via text, although I have to admit I am not the best at remembering to pray for her in the way we were advised to.

[Author]

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