Happy Thursday Beloved! Hope all is well!!
This past week has certainly been an eventful one.
Last Friday, just before the outreach at Bayfront, I called the Sarasota County Parks and Recreation Department to speak with the contact person listed for the upcoming COUNTY SPONSORED event- “Witches Night Out”
I found out that this is the 4th year they’ve done this event and my BIG concern was that this government sponsored event was going to have actual witches there doing actual witchcraft on all those who were interested. Here is the event description:
This definitely awakened the “NIMBY” anointing in me to say- Not In My Back Yard!
By the grace of God, I was able to speak with the woman who organizes this event for about 15 minutes. She is also the one who came up with the idea for it. She seemed pretty nice, and she told me that she felt like these things were just harmless entertainment. Not sure if she was being totally honest but I gave her the benefit of the doubt.
I shared with her the deep concerns I had, and I made sure to tell her that I know people who have been involved in witchcraft, and I told her what they’ve said about it, while also making reference to the Bible. She seemed to receive it all pretty well and the conversation ended on a good note.
I did share with her that I felt it should be brought up at the County Commissioners meeting though, so I let her know that I would be doing that.
About an hour later, I got to Bayfront, and we prayed for this woman and the situation during our preservice prayer time.
Not even 20 minutes later, a man came through the park who was a believer and he was VERY encouraged by what we were doing. He hung around and talked to us for a while, and during our conversation I mentioned to him that the event was going on and that I spoke with the woman who organized it. He was blown away.
He then told me that he works for the county and that he knows the woman who I spoke to! What are the chances!?
Here he is. His name is Burt Wizeman
I then told him that I was going to speak to the county commission about it, and he thought it was a great idea. He also told me that he has two Christian friends on the board and he reached out to them ahead of time and let them know I was coming.
Can’t make this stuff up!!!
So, on Tuesday morning I showed up at the meeting, and I let them know about how dangerous this partnership with the demonic realm was. Here’s the massive new County building where the meeting was held:
Here’s the chamber of the meeting room. I love how they have “In God We Trust” inscribed above the county logo:
Here’s a recording of what I shared with them:
And here are the 5 Commissioners that we need to be praying for:
Let’s hope and pray that they decide to cancel this event.
As for the rest of Friday night, we had some good traffic and got plant some good seeds. Here’s a family getting ministered to, who ended up praying to receive the Lord:
My favorite moment was when a Hindu family walked up and I offered to take their picture. They let me, and then I spoke to them about Jesus. They didn’t know much about Jesus or the Bible, so I shared the Gospel with them and some of my testimony. They received it well, let me pray for them and took tracts. It was awesome!
One thing that really seemed to connect with them was telling them that with Jesus- everyone is equal, and that there is no caste system.
Here’s a pic of them as they were walking away:
We even had a brother come who found us on The Joy Project app, which was super cool. He had almost no evangelism experience at all, but he preached open air that night!
On Saturday morning we went to Ekballo, and Sofiya got to do some prophetic art during worship which was great. Natalie really enjoyed that too!
Saturday evening, we got a lot of rain, so the outreach was delayed quite a bit. But, we still got to minister to a good amount of people and plant lots of good seeds.
In fact, we even had a few times where some kids responded to the altar calls, including this group:
A man also came up and told me that he loves bringing his kids to Riverwalk when we are there because they all get ministered to so much. Very cool to hear that! Here they are:
We also had two people with us who had not evangelized before, which was great.
Also, a group of young people came out to minister with us for the third straight week, and one of them shared with me that he first heard us minister at Riverwalk when he was 13 years old, He said that way back then it inspired him to one day evangelize too. And now he’s doing it!!
Here we are with them:
So cool to get to see the long-term effects of the seeds we’ve sown!
On Sunday, there was a decent crowd at Siesta, so we got to plant some good seeds and minister to a number of people. Here’s a few pics:
A young man also came to be baptized, which was cool.
We also met a brother from Venezuela who used to preach on the streets. Of course, over there the communist government had the power to severely persecute people that did that, so he was jailed multiple times. He finally had to flee to America for his own safety, and he ended up in Atlanta.
He got married last Friday, and he came to Sarasota for his honeymoon. He said that he has been so discouraged at the state of the American church since he came here but seeing us gave him hope again.
Here he is:
So cool to meet him, hear his testimony and get prayer from him!
The other highlight for me came while I was in the drum circle juggling when I walked by the guy who used to be our BIGGEST opponent. The one who used to cuss me out almost every time he saw me. Well, for the past few months, he hasn’t said a word against us, and on Sunday he actually talked to me like a normal person! He told me that he once tried to learn how to juggle and never could do it. It was like he was giving me a compliment…I was SHOCKED.
Hearts are definitely changing, it is exciting to see!
Hope to see you on the mission fields this weekend!
Love and blessings,
CV
PS- On Monday I shared a message at The Front on Yom Kippur, where I shared some God stories from American history and then we prayed for the nation. You can see the recording below: