A MOVIE AND A PRAYER WALK

Hello, friends!  Hope you are having a wonderful Sunday.  It is early here but I am waiting until my medicine kicks in so I can eat breakfast so I thought I would take a few minutes to catch you up on things.

I ended up not going in to work at all last week because my back was hurting me so much.  I did check the desk/phone whenever I was in there (which was almost every day).  I missed only one call which Pastor was able to pick up on when he got back from work.

So much went on this past week, but let me tell you about yesterday which was so awesome.

It began with me getting up very early, falling back to sleep, and then getting woken up by a phone call from my friend Donna.  Thank goodness she did call me because I had to get ready to go out in less than an hour.

Joe went with me and we picked up Cathy and Kathy and went to church for the movie "Left Behind."  It has been years since I've seen it and although I remembered most of it, there were parts I had forgotten.  It was a lot more intense than I remembered it.  And it certainly wasn't a "feel good" movie like most of the ones we've been showing.

We took them home after the movie and then Joe and I went to Shoprite and got something to eat.  We had only 2 hours before we had to be back at church.  I was going to get something from the Asian bar, but there was almost nothing on it and what was there looked as if it had been sitting around for most of the day (which it probably had) so I opted for sushi.  When I picked up the package the Japanese man who runs the counter thanked me for getting it.  These people speak very little English but are so polite and always smiling.  The Japanese woman was sitting in the restaurant area eating food from the Asian bar so I guess it was OK.  Maybe I just wasn't in the mood for it.  Joe got a hoagie.  Then we headed back to pick up Kathy who was returning to church with us.

There were five congregations involved in the neighborhood prayer walk.  One of them was our sister church La Roca de Reading.  They had traveled for about an hour (67 miles) to be there.  As you can tell, they are a Hispanic church and there are many Spanish speaking people in our neighborhood.  What a help they were.  The other four churches were from our neighborhood.  As one of the pastors said, we are really all ONE church.  I took a few pictures before we started out and before all the people showed up.  There were over 30 people involved in the walk (not counting kids).

Kathy and I could not walk the distance with our disabilities, so I asked Pastor if Kathy and I could drive the route, stopping to pray along the way.  He said, "Of course" so that is what we did.  I drove and we stopped about 8 times to pray for the neighborhood.  What a wonderful blessing it was for us.  But the people who walked got an even bigger blessing.

Over 12 people (they lost count) were approached, prayed for, and invited to services today.  Joe had brought along 3 Bibles and gave away all of them.  He was asked for more but didn't have any with him.  

There were some amazing stories of what happened.  One group came across a Dominican family that could not speak English.  But some of the La Roca people were in that group and were able to witness to them in Spanish.

One man had a dream the night before that he was talking to a young lady in a red sweatshirt.  He woke up with the distinct feeling he needed to talk to this girl.  During the walk he met a young girl about 15 years old in a red sweatshirt and his group was able to talk to her and pray with her.  

The wife of one of the pastors had their 6 week old baby with her.  She left the group and went to the church we were going to end at to feed the baby.  As she walked along she saw a teenaged boy and girl and had a strong urge to talk to them.  She stopped and did.  They parted and when she got to the church, there they were sitting on the steps.  They didn't know that was where she was going, they just happened to be hanging out there.  She was able to stop and pray for them before going inside of the church. About 10 minutes later her husband and his group showed up.  Not knowing his wife had prayed with these two teens, he began talking to them and prayed with them.

These are just three of the amazing stories that were told during the debriefing.  It was a wonderful night.  We ended with a praise song which was awesome and a promise that this was just the beginning of our witness in our neighborhood.

We took Rick and Kathy home and then came home ourselves.  We were very tired, but very happy.  I would not have missed that for anything and I can't wait until we can do it again.

Hope you have a wonderful Sunday full of God's love.  Now I have to go get ready for church.  My very busy week is over so I hope to have more posts this week.

Kathy