The Young Preacher

I'm shy, and even though I'm working on it in my own way, I still get really shy from time to time.

_{Photo by Luis Morera}

One of the things that stopped during the pandemic was the door to door evangelism by the famous Jehovah witness people. It was probably one thing I was glad about because irrespective of the fact that I'm a Christian and do go to church, I do not like stranger always stopping me from whatever it is I'm doing just so they could preach to me.

I have nothing against them preaching, I just don't like it when it's just me and directly at my home. My friends will always ask why I don't ask them to leave and my reason has always been simple, I don't do that because it always feels like I'm doing something extremely wrong chasing away the people of God who only wanted to share the gospel with me.

Anyways, with time, I've gotten really good at avoiding them whenever I see them coming. I always make sure to lock my door and stay quiet inside while waiting for them to leave after they're done knocking. Unfortunately, the Jehovah witness are not the only people who go door to door, other churches do too.

I remember some time last week, I had gone to the market with a female friend of mine who had asked me to escort her to go get some foodstuff. I followed her to the market but didn't really go into the market with her, there was this spot where you could sit right outside the market and wait, so I sat there.

We were only two sitting at that place, myself and another man who sat directly opposite me. About ten minutes of me sitting there, I saw this young guy walk up to the man and spoke to him. The distance wasn't that far so I could hear what they were saying clearly. The young man had asked the other man sitting if he could share the gospel with him and the man had declined, so the young man did what I dreaded he would do, he turned to me and asked the same question.

Of course I said yes, I didn't know how to not say yes but then I told him I was waiting for someone and she would be back anytime soon so he had to be quick, to which he said okay.

Him agreeing to be fast kinda placed my mind at ease but what happened next made me wish the ground would open up and swallow me. When this young preacher opened his mouth to speak, it felt like the man had swallowed a microphone. He was standing right next to him, but he was yelling as if he was preaching to the entire street. I felt so embarrassed because everyone who walked past were all looking at us.

I felt like asking him to reduce his voice but I felt that would be disrespectful, so I just allowed him to carry on. The preaching lasted for about seven minutes before my friend came to my rescue and that was probably the longest seven minutes of my life.

Now I can't help but feel like the whole experience has given me PTSD because now, my fear for evangelist who go door by door had tripled and it's all thanks to the young preacher.