Two Special Hours

Recently, Lord gave me two special hours that I would like to share with you. I had an appointment in a nearby village and had two hours before I needed to go home. Mom was with me in the car, and she encouraged me to go out from door to door to sell some books while she gave out pamphlets. I decided to do so and sent up a special prayer for God to help me in this few minutes of my day.

We had a look at the map; Mom picked one area and I went to another. I know God led me to choose just that area. As I approached the first house, my sister called. She later told me that she and her husband had knelt down just after the talk and prayed especially for me to get a special blessing from the Lord. I finished talking with her and went to the first house. I knocked

Stine Gro Struksnaes using her moments wisely.

on one door, but nobody answered. I knew someone was there, as I had seen a man while talking to my sister. I went into the garden, and found there was a second door. Finally the man came out—a white haired man, maybe around 60. I started to present my cookbook to him, which I have written with my sister. He did not seem very interested and told me his wife was not at home and that I should come back later. I decided to give him a pamphlet my father wrote entitled “The Way to Health.” He was curious who I was, and as the village where my father grew up is not far away from this village, he knew my father’s name. My father has been quite active, sharing pamphlets, writing in newspapers and doing his work as a physiotherapist in the village. “I remember my mother talking about you,” he said. His mom was now dead, but he had some indistinct memories about her telling about my father and even mentioning his children. This led to a talk about the spiritual matters that my father had been writing about. There seemed to be something more inside him. He admitted that he sometimes prayed, and that twice he had had “good luck” in serious accidents, which he thought might have been help from above. I thought about the books by Ellen G. White that I also had in my backpack. I took out a Steps to Christ. “Will it bother my conscience reading it?” he asked. He admitted his life had not been the way it should, even though he had not been such a “bad” sinner. I told him that this book just showed what to do about a bad conscience. It tells about Jesus who loves all. He decided to buy the book.

I wondered how his mom had heard about us and suggested that maybe she had gotten my father’s newsletters. My father sends out newsletters to about 1000 non-Seventh-day Adventists in Norway, telling about last day events and salvation in Christ. I got the idea to offer this man the chance to sign up for the free newsletters, and he did! I was so thankful that I had been led to just this home. I had only just finished when his neighbor came along. The Lord had allowed our time to be spent uninterrupted.

Now came a quite long period with no sales and no good talks. It was far between the houses, but the Norwegian countryside in the dress of spring was beautiful to the eye. I came up to another house. First nobody opened, but I was impressed to go a bit farther into the yard and shout to see if someone was there. The man heard me from the veranda, and let me into the home. He told me he was only living part-time in this house, which belonged to his girl friend. He lived somewhere else. Where? “Bjoneroa,” he told me. Just outside this very village I used to live for many years. He even told me the street on which he lived. Just a couple of days before, Dad and I had been passing out pamphlets there, and I had dropped one in his very postbox! “Did you see it?” I asked. “Yes,” he said, “I started to read it last night.” First he had thought it was from Jehovah’s Witnesses, but had found it worth looking at. And now, the next day, the Lord allowed him to meet the very one who had dropped the pamphlet in his postbox—in another village many kilometers away!

He decided to buy my cookbook, even though he did not have money with him. So I got his mailing address in order to send him the number of my bank account. It is a good thing, as I can write him and encourage him to go on reading the pamphlet!

My time had almost run out, but I still decided to drop into a couple of houses. In the last home an elderly lady met me. She told me she did not usually buy from people going from door to door, but somehow she bought my cookbook anyway, after only a few minutes’ visit.

Dear friends, maybe this does not sound like the greatest of experiences, but by sharing this I want to encourage you to use the few spare hours you may have now and then. One hour, two hours—you never know what God can make out of them! Why not make it a custom to have a few books and tracts in your car to use when the right opportunity is there? God can send you right to the ones He has appointed that very day! “Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days.” Ecclesiastes 11:1.

By Stine Gro Struksnæs. Email: stinegro78@hotmail.com.