One Visit, 9 Baptisms
Erica’s husband didn’t seem pleased when he found his wife and me studying the Bible in their home in the U.S. state of California.
The husband, a member of another religious denomination, walked in on our second Bible study together. He is a large man, and I felt scared.
“My name is Yolanda Martinez Santos, and I am with the Seventh-day Adventist Church”, I said, extending a hand.
I had first knocked on Erica’s door two weeks earlier as a student with Souls West, an evangelism school operated in Arizona by the Adventist Church’s Pacific Union. A young literature evangelist with the Youth Rush summer program had knocked on my door, leading me to the Adventist Church in 2013, and now I was going door to door, offering literature at the request of a local church.
Despite the surprise of Erica’s husband, he did not ask me to leave. But Erica later told me that he was unhappy. Erica and I prayed that her husband would allow us to study the Bible - and that he would join us.
To our astonishment, the husband joined our next meeting. He also announced that he would study with us every week.
No long after that, Erica invited her brother to our Bible study, and he eagerly accepted. Then Erika’s 13-year-old son asked if he could study, too.
As the Bible studies continued, Erica began sharing what she was learning with her sister, who lives in another city. The sister wanted to know more, so she reached out to local Adventists and started studying the Bible with them. The sister’s husband and mother-in-law joined them.
That’s not all. Erica introduced me to her parents, who told me that Erica had become a different person. They said they wanted what she had. “What you are missing is Jesus”, I said.
The parents started to study the Bible with us.
It’s hard to believe that the knock of a Bible worker on just one door has now led to nine baptisms: Erica, her son, her brother, her mother, her father, her sister, her brother-in-law, and her sister’s mother-in-law. Even Erica’s neighbor was baptized.
As for Erica’s husband, he now attends a local Adventist church regularly.
Erica later told me that when I knocked on her door that first time, she had been praying for a month that God would prove His existence and reveal the right church to her.
“If you had never knocked on my door, none of this would have happened”, Erica said. “God, You have answered my call!”
Yolanda Martinez Santos is a Bible worker in California.