The First Goodbye

Time is dwindling down, days fly by and it seems too soon I’ll be leaving here! I have much to do before leaving, so I am planning out my days with much prayer and prudence! Yesterday I went to visit a good friend of mine. He is an older man for Benin that is, being he is 53 years old. He works at the mayor’s office in the civil department giving people their identity cards. His name is Laurent. He has helped me greatly with culture study research. Manny and I spent three days with him in February, enjoying thoroughly the time together. He loves to talk which is helpful when I need to ask him a lot of questions. He also has two sons that live at home, Armand and Olivier, some of the nicest guys I know in Benin, well mannered and caring, unfortunately not always too common among young folks here. But thanks to their father I surmise, he is a man of principle and virtue. He is always working on some new project on his several acres of property on the outskirts of town. I knew that it would be last chance to stop by his house, as he is only there on Saturdays and Sundays, working the rest of the week. So I stopped by to share a meal and conversation. I gave him a book as a thank you present, the French translation of “Bible Readings for the Home”. The man devours books, and he was thoroughly thankfully for the gift, saying he might not get much sleep that night! I always pray for him, that he will see the light of God’s word fully. He is very faithful in his Assembly of God church and has left all the traditions behind. But he is very tolerant. What I mean he allows everyone to have their opinion, surprisingly post-modern mindset. For him, what he believes is good for him, but maybe not for someone else. This is perhaps worse than someone who is a straight pagan, at least this type of person when convicted sees how twisted the old ways are and how liberating a life in Christ is. A man like Laurent well educated and open to anything, is hard to convince that there is absolute truth, good thing the Holy Spirit does all the convicting and I just maybe do the talking and praying. But I can sense him questioning. This last visit we discussed Jehovah’s witnesses, who don’t believe in the Trinity. He asked me what I thought of this, I mentioned how either Jesus is the Son of God or He is a liar or a lunatic. This he agrees with, but here’s a challenge to his openness, the Jehovah’s witnesses believe what is wrong? So not everything is right if you believe it? Questions are such a good way to get people to arrive at their own conclusions, the series by Shawn Boonstra and Jeff Rosario in my last entry talk about this, very powerful. Well we ate late, the usual in these parts. I was really tired after the big campmeeting weekend, but I knew I could sleep in on Monday and this was our last visit! Laurent wished me much success and God’s blessings. We know that we may never see each other here on earth again, I hope we can both meet in Heaven.