A Yerevan State University professor told me yesterday she asked an American Protestant minister if he could read a text for an educational CD she was producing. “He said he’d help, that I should come to his church service on Sunday, and after the service, we’d talk. I told him I was busy, but could meet on Tuesday. Hearing this, he refused to help.”

Today, while enjoying some peace and quiet at home, someone knocked on our door, and after mistaking the women outside for people I knew, I opened the door. Two Bible-toting women, with strange and forced smiles, asked if we knew about the Bible. After a few seconds, we sent them on their way, telling them they shouldn’t be selling their souls for a sack of flour, their smiles turning into scowls as they walked towards the neighbor’s door.

An hour later, while getting some apples out of our storage, the neighbor opened her door, smiling as if she had just won the lottery.

“You should have heard what I told those women,” she said. “I let them in, then, as they talked, I went and got them each a glass of water. Then I told them about a passage in the Old Testament that says one cannot be poisoned if he’s spreading the Word of God. I tried handing them each a glass of water, and they got up and nearly ran out of our house.”