Happy Thursday Beloved! I hope all is glorious!
Well, as we suspected, we had to cancel tonight’s housefire due to the storm. But, praise God, the 941 seems to have been largely spared from any significant problems. Let’s keep those in the panhandle lifted up tonight though, and let’s pray and believe that God will weaken this storm before it hits land.
Speaking of storms, on Monday I brought a prophetic word at The Front about what I believe God was speaking through Tropical Storm Debby. Debby came through our area last month and left us with a record amount of rainfall and flooding. It’s an intense word, but it really encouraged me a lot. Others said they were touched by it also.
It was so cool to get this text the next morning from Michelle Skorski too, saying that one man was on his face in the prayer room after I finished.
I began the message by sharing some amazing God reports of what He’s doing around the nations, particularly on college campuses. I also shared a testimony of what happened this past Sunday…when we are pretty sure we broke our all-time record for spontaneous baptisms.
It was a WILD experience. Two people came to be baptized, and after we made the announcement…dozens of people came to watch. After the baptism, one man came and asked to be baptized also…and made a plea with everyone watching to do the same.
God moved, and over the next 90 minutes, we baptized somewhere around 20 people.
We got very little video of the baptisms, but I did put this little 1 minute reel together to show some of the highlights of the night starting in the pavilion. Check it out below:
Several different people were ministering to the people getting baptized, so I didn’t get to see everything that happened, but one womans experience was very memorable. I got a word of knowledge that someone watching had pain from their past keeping them from connecting with God. I spoke it out over the megaphone, and before I could even get the entire word out, a woman came up to me, put her arms around me, and started travailing. She got baptized shortly after.
Another girl that got baptized sent Rachael this text the next day:
So cool to see how she was touched!
Just for some context, in the 6.5 years of doing this, we’ve probably had around 20 times where we baptized someone…and it led to more people getting baptized. On 5 of those occasions, we’ve had 9 or more people get baptized. 3 of those have been in just the past 6 months, beginning the night before the eclipse. I think that is pretty exciting!
At the end of the night there was another powerful moment when a woman named Coco, who we’d been praying for since we met her a few weeks ago, came back and made a profession of faith. She even hugged me and cried in my arms too, which was very moving.
On Saturday, we saw God move in pretty cool ways too. Right when we arrived, Paul started talking to a young man named Mikael, and he ended up praying to receive the Lord. We talked to him for a while, gave him a lot of counsel, and then later on he brought his two friends over who also prayed to receive the Lord. Here’s a picture of them as they were being ministered to:
Many tracts and gifts were handed out that night too, (including many by the children, which was awesome) and others came and got ministered to throughout the night also. Here’s one family that was being ministered to for a while:
Our friend Amanda also got touched mightily by the Holy Spirit as she was being prayed over for healing.
We’re believing that she is being healed!
One other moment that was powerful was when I asked Geraldine to preach the Gospel in Spanish, and I found out that several people in the park were listening and being clearly moved by the Spirit. Funny enough, it was actually her first time ever preaching at the outreach, and I found out later that Chris had actually prophesied over her on the way to the park that she would preach that night. Super cool how God works in these intricate ways!
It was also cool to see our friend Julian, who was healed of learning disabilities after God touched him at Riverwalk 3 years ago. He told us that he is now one of the best students in his entire class. So amazing!
Saturday afternoon at the retirement home was great too. I shared a message about the 3 motivations the bible gives us to evangelize 1) to help Jesus get the reward of His suffering 2) to help people avoid hell and go to heaven 3) to earn eternal treasures for ourselves. We had a smaller group than usual, but people were definitely connecting with God and seemed motivated to preach the gospel afterwards, so I was happy about that!
Friday night was good too. No pics, but there were decent crowds, and we got to touch a good amount of people.
All in all, it was a great weekend. I believe this weekend will be great too! It will actually be the last weekend of the Biblical/Hebrew year 5784, which ends on Wednesday night too. Let’s see what God does to finish off this epic year!
BIG thanks to all the mighty warriors who came to serve! We love and appreciate you all!
God bless
Chris, Sofiya and Natalie