Foti

Some of you may remember Foti, my Greek neighbor, the guy I got in a heated debate with. The debate was roughly about the existence of God, whether or not the “whole idea” of Christianity is ridiculous. We spent close to a year eye-balling each other as I passed his house, getting a little closer when the church helped Big Doug when his house burned down, and finally getting invited to Foti’s son’s birthday party this summer.

Well, Rebecca, Foti’s wife, came to last week’s community dinner. She mentioned that Foti is a little shy around crowds of people he doesn’t know, but that he really does want to come one day.

The day after (Friday), I stop by the house and Foti is there. We get to talking a little bit. I can’t really go into all he said, but he really opened up. It was an amazing conversation. I think if you said, “There’s an atheist who really can’t stand pastors and church,” you would not think we’d be friends. Foti says he appreciates that I could listen to him and then “fight back.” He is hungry for what he called “real conversation.” Amen. It’s good to have an argument, some deep thing to discuss over coffee or Indian tea.

So we’ll see where it goes.

Oh, there’s this. Rebecca is from India. A few weeks ago, Jessica introduced us to a friend of hers from India, Kulo. He has a powerful ministry in the villages of a state in India. John keeps his brochure in the car and reads it whenever we go somewhere. He went out to the car, got it and showed it to Rebecca, telling her about Kulo and letting people know about Jesus. Melissa said that when she prayed for John before he was born, she kept sensing that she would “lose” him to the mission field. I think back to the time we were in Las Vegas and John wanted to know if the people there knew Jesus, and maybe “we should go to places and tell them about Jesus.”