Go Ye Therefore

Connie Kendall walks into Whit's End as a customer instead of an employee, which is unusual enough that John Avery Whittaker notices right away. She orders ice cream, announces that she has blown it, and says the past couple of days have been the pits. When Whit asks whether she wants to talk about it, Connie admits that she does and she doesn't, and then tells him everything anyway.

It started with a book. Her friend Robert from church gave her a copy of Evangelism Made Easy by Pembroke Maskasky, and Connie decided to work through it chapter by chapter, because telling people about Jesus really is important. Chapter one sent the two of them to the park with a stack of little booklets called Five Steps to Salvation. Robert managed to hand one to a man who actually asked questions, and he came back glowing. Connie's afternoon went differently. One man took a booklet just so he could tear it up in front of her face. A woman asked about the five steps and then picked through trash cans the whole time Connie tried to explain them. Another man asked too, and Connie got so nervous she mixed the steps up completely. The only person who politely asked her for a booklet had to interrupt her mid-complaint to do it.

That was not the end of it. The book also told them to tuck pamphlets inside books at the local bookstore, as many as they could manage until somebody caught them. Somebody did. The owner marched them both out the door while Robert insisted it was persecution and compared the two of them to the early Christians facing lions. Connie, who used to enjoy shopping there, was mortified. Then came the car. The book suggested using a family car as a witness, so Connie covered her mother's from bumper to fender with stickers, and her mom came in ready to phone the FBI over what she assumed was vandalism. The stickers came off in thirty seconds flat.

Finally the book told Connie to be bold at school, the way Peter preached in Jerusalem in Acts chapter two. During a study hall run by a substitute teacher, her classmates Dan and Angie turned her attempt into a joke, teasing her about pamphlets, bookstores and preaching until she asked to be excused. Connie tells Whit she tried to sound like Peter and sounded more like Porky Pig. She is ready to give up on the book, the pamphlets and Robert altogether.

Then the door opens. Cheryl, a classmate who had asked earlier that day if they could talk sometime, has tracked Connie down at Whit's End. Whit quietly excuses himself to the back room. Cheryl explains that she has watched Connie change since she came to Odyssey, from the girl who started all the parties into someone happier and different, and she wants what Connie has. Connie tells her plainly that the only thing she has is a relationship with Jesus Christ, and Cheryl asks how she can have it too.

When Whit is finally allowed back in, he finds Cheryl newly part of God's family and tells her the angels in heaven are rejoicing. He points out to Connie that witnessing turned out to be simpler than she feared, and that she did just fine. Connie corrects him gently. It was not her, she says. It was the Lord. Then she settles in to tell her friend about faith, forgiveness and obedience, and everything else she has learned.