By JEFFARAH GIBSON
Tribune Features Writer
A DEPRESSED French man was five minutes away from committing suicide. The rope at his home was prepared and he told his friends what he intended to do.
But before he got the opportunity to put the noose around his neck, he met English missionary Jonathan Page on a train ride.
"I started talking to him on the train. I told him I do not know if you are going through a difficult time in your life but can I say a prayer for you. I held his hand and I just prayed from my heart and I said Jesus please help this man."
"He started weeping on this crowded train and he said you do not understand I just lost my job a month ago, soon after I lost my job my wife and child left because I was a financial wreck. I did not know what I was going to do and I said God if you are real show me something today because if you don't, when I get off this train I am going to hang myself. He said 'here I am five minutes from home and you meet me on this train just to tell me God loves me that is not a mistake'," said Mr Page.
The man on the train is one of many helped by Mr Page in his work as a missionary. He has traveled to several continents spreading the message of God's love.
For three weeks Mr Page has been in the Bahamas evangelising to different youth groups. Just recently he and three other missionaries, also part of nonprofit organisation Mission Zones, visited the Willamae Pratt Center for Girls.
"We have been talking to them just basically showing them that there are other alternatives to the way they may be going. Often times that is what it takes with young people because there is peer pressure. By taking time with them makes all the difference. I did a talk the other day with a youth group and I never met twenty young people so passionate about life and ready to get going. They had their ambitions and they had their goals. They are ready to get their lives started," he said.
Since Mission Zones started in 2003, this has been the fifth year evangelising in the Bahamas. They believe by creating personal relationships with individuals they will be able to make a difference.
"I do not work with a big church or organisation. I am not here to have not huge crusade or campaign. I believe that if we are going to change the world we have to change it one heart at a time. I look at my life and see what needs to be changed. If everyone would start taking that approach then it would be a much better place. I am not a big preacher or anything like that but when I start talking about what happened in my life, someone else starts talking about what went on in their life," he said.
In the past four months Mr Page and the other missionaries have been to France, Germany, Norway, England, the Caribbean and several countries in Africa. His first journey took him to Africa, where he worked closely with HIV/AIDS infected children.
In Africa Mission Zones started several projects and training seminars.
"I have been to some of the countries that have been in war, political, or economic problems. For the first five years I did a lot of work children who have HIV/AIDS or are orphans. They have been neglected and had to fend for themselves. Some of them stay on the streets and get into mischief. But we trained them, gave them some life skills so that can get back into the community," he said.
Mr Page hopes to reach people in every corner of the globe. He has done a lot of work in the Caribbean. When the earthquake hit Haiti in 2010, he and the other missionaries spent several months doing all they can to help those impacted by the disaster.
"Everyone has an individual heart, everyone has an individual life and it takes time to be personal with people. It is not about coming out with the perfect answer sometimes. I cried many times in Haiti after the earthquake because the stories that I heard were so heartbreaking. I was there for them, I hugged them, held their hand and that is what counts. It is about changing the world one heart at a time."
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