Mr. Top
by Travis Antonich
Hi, children. Happy Sabbath. This is me Travis with Downey Seventh Day Adventist Church. Can you believe it’s already February? Wow, this 2021 is going so fast right? I can’t even believe January’s gone. Hope you all been doing well, and had a great start to the school year.
And so, if you look behind me, you’re probably wondering why I got all these t-shirts behind me, right? And no, it’s not because I haven’t cleaned my room yet. I’m going to do that tomorrow. But it’s part of my story. And my story is about a man named Mr. Top. And Mr. Top, lived in Bangkok, Thailand. Thailand is a country in a city in Thailand is called Bangkok. And what Mr. Top job was, was if you can take a guess he had a business where he sold tops, t-shirts, anything any type of wardrobe that goes on top of your body, and the top half. That’s what he sold. So that’s why he named his business. Mr. Top. So Mr. Top, sold t-shirts to make money for his family. So he could have food for his family. But if Mr. Top doesn’t sell t-shirts, Mr. Top can’t feed his family, right. And so Mr. Top’s business was very slow, and he wasn’t selling many t-shirts. See every day he’d wake up, leave his home, he would go to the city, to the market, set up his shop and he would sell tops, but he wasn’t selling anything. And so he got very sad and discouraged. But you know what? He came home and he noticed in his neighborhood. There was an Adventist missionary that had just bought a building in his neighborhood.
Do you know what a missionary is, kids? A missionary is when people from church, like Adventist, Seventh-day Adventist from our church. They go out and they promote what we believe. They try to spread God’s message to the people, whether it’s in your country or your city, other countries missionaries go all over the world. And they went to Thailand. So they bought a building by where Mr. Top lived in his neighborhood. And there was people there who Seventh-day Adventist Christian spreading the gospel, the good news. But Mr. Top wasn’t a Christian, he had no idea who Jesus was or anything. He was actually a Buddhist. So there was a pastor there at this missionary building. And pastor Shudrack and he never went to any of the meetings. But since there was a missionary there, they would go door to door knocking. So one day one of the the pastors, Pastor Shudrack knocked on Mr. Top’s door at his home. And he said, Hi there, my name is Pastor Shudrack. I’m here with the Seventh-day Adventist missionary. We love to invite you to church on the Sabbath one day, or if you can’t come to church, we’d love to pray for you.
And Mr. Top got very offended. He said “No!” He says I’m fine. I don’t need your God. I have my god. I’m a Buddhist. Leave me alone. And pastor Shudrack said You know, that’s totally fine. You know where to find us if you ever if you’re ever interested to find out. But he said I’ll be praying for you before he left. And so that night Mr. Top had a very strange dream. You see in his dream he could see his house Mr. Top he could see his own house Mr. Top, and his house was surrounded by darkness. But the building where the missionaries were was surrounded by light. It was so bright he could he could barely see it. But he recognized this was the building. And he could see pastor Shudrack there preaching. And he was surrounded by light. But when he looked around, away from the building, everything was darkness. So this dream got Mr. Top very scared. So the next morning, he runs to the missionary building.
And he asked Mr. Shudrack, if he could join for some Bible studies. And he also wanted him to pray for him. And he told them about his dream and what happened. And so they had a Bible study. There were also teaching English classes. So you’ve got to learn some English. And he prayed for him. He prayed together. Mr. Top said he never felt a greater peace in his life. Then on that day that he went to church at the missionary. And so the next day, after he went to the missionary, and spent all day with the pastor, Mr. Top goes back to his business in the city. And guess what? He sold all of his t shirts. One after one, after one after one, all of his t shirts were flying off the shelves. Mr. Top could not believe it. And Mr. Top knew exactly who he was working for. You see, Mr. Top didn’t know exactly who Jesus was, or who even the God of the Bible is, right? But he knew he found the truth, because he knew that God was helping him and was showing him love. And he was able to feed his family.
You see kids, there’s a lot of people that don’t know who about Jesus, or God, or the Bible, or anything that we know in church. But that doesn’t mean God can help them. And all we have to do is pray for them. So we want to pray for our friends and our family. And ourselves too, right? Because we all need God. And so there’s a scripture here, I want to read it Psalms 120:1, and it says, in my distress, I cried to the Lord, and He heard me. So even when we feel like we’re in trouble, pray to God because He will hear you and He will help. Well, that’s the end of my story. I hope you guys enjoyed it. I’ll see you guys next time. Be good. God bless you and happy Sabbath.