Running the gauntlet

It's Sunday. I'm walking to the market with my family. As we are passing a church, the teams with their pamphlets and packets of wet tissues come issuing out of the doors. My policy with these people is to politely humour them, but ... to never plant a foot. I nod, and smile and take their pamphlet, but never stop walking.

A man comes up to me and greets me with the wet tissues. His companion approaches my wife. Taking the tissues with a hand-shake, I smile and say 'Thank you.'

'Do you believe in Jesus?' he asks in English as I walk by, our hand-shake released. It is unusually forward, but perhaps he has not prepared to approach anyone in English, I feel he is improvising.

'No.' I say, as I walk past. A direct answer like this might seem like it is against policy, but there is little one can do with such a direct question. It feels like the expedient response, as the engagement seems nearly done anyways.

'Yes you do,' he says, and basks in his victory.

And I have my wet tissues, and am through the gauntlet.  

My wife doesn't fare so well. She has met someone she knows. She is planted.

Lucy looks back, concerned for her mother.  But I take her hand and keep walking. This is also policy. We don't go back for stragglers.  It sounds brutal, I know. But the straggler is in very little mortal danger, and this gives her an out-- she has to go catch up with her family.