St. Paul's Blog 2: Acts 13:1-15:35

Guess what! We went on a missionary journey!!! It started out with some pretty stiff opposition and went downhill from there. You’d think that people would be happy to hear good news, but noooo. All they want to do is yell at us. The governor of Cyprus seemed willing to hear what we had to say, but his blind friend--well, at least he was blind by the time we’d left--was a little less willing to “see” things our way.

Barnabas’s whiny little cousin Mark couldn’t take it, so he was gone before we even left the first little island. It’s a good thing too, because I think I’d have helped him “see” things my way by the end of the trip too, if you know what I mean…

In the next town we were able to expound at great length on the gospel, and they even asked us back the next week. But we must have done something to offend the Pisidian Antioch Ladies’ Society because they ran us out on a rail. That was OK; the town was real dusty anyway, so we cleaned our feet off and headed for Iconium…

Iconium was a lot like Pisidian Antioch, except that the people there weren't very welcoming and also they tried to stone us.

We hoped we might get a warmer reception in Lystra, and we weren't disappointed. All we did was heal one guy and suddenly they were convinced that we were gods! (I was kind of offended that Barnabas got to be Zeus and I had to be Hermes.) After a lot of talking, we managed to keep them from offering sacrifices to us. But then our old friends from Pisidian Antioch and Iconium came to town, and pretty soon, the rocks were flying again.

Next, we visited the town of Derbe. I'm not sure why they call it that, because it doesn't even resemble a hat or a race. But the people there were friendlier, so that was nice. Even better, we reached a lot of people there for Jesus! This missionarying can be pretty exhausting sometimes, but it's worth it.