Happy Friday Family! Hope all is well!
I was hoping to send this out yesterday, but by the grace of God Sofiya and I signed a lease on a new home yesterday, and I spent much of the evening moving stuff in. It’s a crazy story. We were supposed to move into another place on March 16th, but it was full of roaches, so we’ve been looking for other options ever since. We were pretty much convinced that we wouldn’t be able to move before the baby comes because of all the HOA approvals you have to go through, but we ended up finding a 2/2 in our same neighborhood for crazy cheap and the HOA approved us the same day because we already live there. Were so thankful!
On top of that, yesterday afternoon I took a trip up to Anna Maria Island to commemorate the 20th anniversary of when Jesus radically touched my life- which ultimately led to my salvation.
It was on Easter Sunday 2006 (4/16/06) and I was on the 3rd day of a 3-day cocaine binge. I went to Holmes Beach at 6am looking for a woman to commit adultery with and rather than finding that, I found a bunch of Christians having an Easter sunrise service. Although they weren’t “evangelizing”, their presence there was what God used to reach me. It’s a pretty powerful story and was even featured in a local Christian newspaper. I included a screenshot of it below:
Years later, after I began doing ministry on the beach and in parks, I realized that God had used this unique way of reaching me as a sign of how we would later be used to reach people- by taking the Presence of Jesus into public places. Also worth noting about this story is that although I had a life changing encounter with the Lord on the beach that day, I never spoke to the people having the meeting at all. They won’t know what their simple “yes” to the Lord meant to me or to the Kingdom of God until we get to heaven.
What a great reminder of how much God uses our “yes” every Friday, Saturday and Sunday in ways that we won’t fully understand until we get to heaven.
Speaking of that, it was another awesome weekend on the mission fields. The team did a great job (as always) holding things down in the 941, so I could take the Holy Ghost to the other coast. This time, I was in Miami for the big Gay Pride event for the 4th year in a row.
I have to say, I was very excited to go to this one because of how much the Pride movement has been crumbling over the past year. Many events have been cancelled or scaled back all across the country so I was anxious to see what this one (which is one of the biggest in America) was going to be like.
As expected, it was not like it was in years past. Less people, less over the top perversion, virtually no pushback, and a generally “weaker” vibe. It was a very fruitful day too, as we saw many people get touched by the power and Word of God.
We had a solid crew from Revive Church (my favorite east coast church- Revive Church | Home), plus we were joined by my Pastor friend Ariel from Miami and two people from his congragation (not pictured), as well as several other people that I know from the area. Here’s most of us:
We were all very busy ministering to people throughout the day. We probably gave away 400 leis, 250 scripture booklets, 120 waters, and about 20 Gods Promises books. We also prayed for dozens of people and we saw close to 10 people recieve the Lord. Here’s just a few pics:
The most powerful moment for me though was when we spoke with a woman who was on vacation from Denmark. She didn’t know about the Pride event, but she happened to be walking by and a friend of mine went up to her and asked her if she knew about Jesus. The woman told her that she was born and raised Muslim but that lately she’s seen people around her, including her son, become followers of Jesus.
She said that before she left Denamrk, she was praying and asking God for a sign of whether she should do that too, and she said that meeting my friend was the sign. She repented of her sin, recieved Jesus, and TOTALLY renounced Islam. It was amazing!!!
She asked me not to share her face but here she is getting prayed over. Right after this, we gave her a God’s Promises book and she sat down and started devouring it right away, pictured on the right.
So cool to see how God used us to be an answer to her prayer!
As for the 941 outreaches, I heard both Friday and Saturday were good and fruitful.
BIG thanks to Isaac and the Ekballo team for coming out to help on Friday night while I was gone!
On Sunday, I went to Church at Revive and I made it back home just in time to go to Siesta. It was such a good night too. SO many people were there and lots of people were stopping by for gifts. We were pretty short handed but we still got to pray for a good number of people.
One Divine appointment was with this family from Tampa. They were going through a really intense battle and seeing us and getting prayer and ministry was a huge encouragement to the faith.
It was also cool to see people stopping to worship throughout the night, including this man who really got drawn in.
I also had some good conversation with some of the drummers and one of them said that God had answered a prayer that he had asked me to pray for him a few weeks ago. He was really moved by it too which is awesome.
BIG thanks to all who came out to serve!
The next day, Michelle Skorski texted me and asked me to preach that night at The Front and I had virtually no time that day to put anything together. I had intended to share some of my standard evangelism training material, but shortly before, God changed all that and gave me a message about the power of remembering what He has done in the midst of trials. It was defintely a Word for me. Here’s the link:
I’m excited to see what God does this weekend! Hope you can join us on the mission field!
Love and blessings!
C, S, N & Y
P.S. Speaking of trials, we are in a BIG one. We’ve got only a few weeks before our baby is due and she hasn’t turned yet. The doctors are convinced that it is a near impossible situation at this point and they want us to have a c section next week. We know God can and does work miracles though so we are believing for her to turn so she can be born the way Jesus was born. PLEASE lift this up in prayer this weekend. We really need it. Thank you!!!