Hey Fam! Happy Friday!
First off, so good to see so many of you last night at The Front Port Charlotte. It was an amazing night of worship with Jason Upton. If you missed it, here is the recording:
It was also so cool that I got to meet Jason and tell him how much his music ministered to me during one of the hardest times of my life.
We’re super excited for this weekend too. For one thing, we will be taking our first mission trip in two months. We will be heading to the largest LGBT Humble (I’m renaming it!) Parade in Florida, which is in St Pete. Details can be found here- 2024 St Pete Pride Parade Festival, presented by CAN Community Health – St Pete Pride
Feel free to join us if you’re able! We will have two people with us that were radically delivered out of that lifestyle too, which is amazing! Here’s the shirt that one of them will be wearing-
This past weekend was another good one. On Friday, we had some good crowds at Bayfront Park and got to minister some people, including one guy quite profoundly. That night we had no Hispanic ministers with us though, and I could really tell how much we needed them in that location.
On Saturday, we had a great service at the Retirement Home, and even had a few new faces there which was great.
Riverwalk was great that day too. Surprisingly there was a much smaller crowd out there than usual, but many people were still ministered to. These two ladies also responded to the altar call to receive Christ:
And this young girl prayed to receive the Lord also.
The boy in the picture is there most of the weeks that we are there, and she is his sister. The boy always talks to us, and this time I found out that their parents are divorced, and they don’t take the kids to church. They said that we are pretty much the only people that minister to them. I was humbled by that.
On Sunday, things kicked off with a young man named Ari, coming over and asking questions about Jesus. He told us that he was a Muslim but was interested in knowing more about Christianity. We shared the entire gospel with him, he made professions of faith, and then he prayed and asked Jesus to reveal Himself to him. He then took all our materials and said very sincerely that he would read them. It was awesome!
Throughout the evening there were others that came for prayer and ministry too, and then the wind and rain came in pretty fiercely. We then moved to the pavilion and continued to praise for a while in the midst of all the crowds and the drum noise. Here’s a video-
Many people were being drawn in to the worship and one guy, whom we met a few months earlier, ended up talking to Mike for a while and later that night he and his friend came to Chris and Geraldines house to surrender to Jesus and get baptized.
Super cool the way God shifted things!
BIG thanks to Mike M, Mike K, Rochelle, Chris, Geraldine, Laney, Amber, Augast, Nathalie, Rebecca, Jack, Rachel, Chuck, Debbie, Mike F, Thom, Nate and others who I didn’t know for coming out to serve! great work!
Another cool thing that is worth mentioning, is that the state of Louisiana just passed a law mandating that the 10 commandments must be prominently displayed in every classroom from kindergarten to college! How cool is that!?
Let’s be in prayer over this. There are legal challenges to it right now and if they fail, I’m expecting many states to follow suit.
That’s all for today. Hope to see you soon on the mission field!
Love and blessings!
Chris, Sofiya and Natalie
Awesome 👏