Greetings beloved! Happy New Year!!
Last night we officially rang in the Biblical/Hebrew Year 5785, and I must say that I am very excited for this new year! 5784 was filled with TONS of incredible God moments…and we’re believing that the momentum will keep on keeping on!
I will say though, I’ve also been pretty shaken by these two storms that happened at the tail end of the year. As I shared 10 days ago in my message at The Front, I really felt like the historic and widespread flooding during Debby was a sobering yet hopeful wakeup call to our area, particularly to the church. If you missed that message, I encourage you to check it out below-
It’s still crazy to me that just 3 days after I preached that message, and 4 days after we had an all-time record number of baptisms on Siesta, we had another storm that caused record damage- this time from storm surge related flooding. In fact, Siesta saw an all-time record amount of storm surge, which caused the flooding below:
Every other barrier island took a massive hit during this storm too, especially Anna Maria Island. This article describes the damage they saw- Hurricane Helene: The ‘heartbreaking’ damage left behind on Anna Maria Island (yahoo.com)
Given all this, it is certainly a time to be on our faces, asking God to search our own hearts and to have mercy upon all those in our area and beyond. This was the focus of our intercession on Tuesday at The House of Prayer:
Interesting side note- a friend of mine who lives on Venice Beach (and does worship from his porch, which faces the beach), got a visit from the Mayor of Venice after Helene. My friend posted about it on Facebook.
Given all the flooding we had on Thursday and Friday, I had no idea what things would look like as we went out to minister over the weekend. Praise God, even though Bayfront Park, Rossi Park, and Siesta beach all got pretty badly flooded, we were still able to minister at each location.
On Friday night, we had really small crowds though, partly because the lights didn’t fully come back on after sunset. Despite this, we still got to sow some good seeds throughout the night. The most powerful Divine appointment we had was with a woman named Angel. Angel was with her two cousins, standing by a bench in front of the statue when I walked up. I turned on some hype worship music, and she and her cousins started dancing. She was wearing a 2-Pac shirt, so I figured she wasn’t saved.
She came and talked to me, and I found out that she is from Jamaica, and that she used to lead worship in a church. She told me that she hadn’t been to church in 4 years though, and was not where she needed to be with God. I prayed over her and the Lord ministered to her a revival fire. She then sang a few worship songs, which were great. It was the first time she sang in 4 years:
It was exciting to see what God did in her that night. I think she may come again to minister with us too.
On Saturday, we had a good amount of people to minister to at the Rossi Park, but, like at Bayfront Park, almost all the lights in the park didn’t work. So, when the sun went down…it got REALLY dark!
It was kind of interesting though because although the lights in the park didn’t work, the ones on the building by the platform worked like normal. This gave us the literal appearance of being light in the darkness, which I felt was kind of prophetic.
Before it got dark, we got to minister to a good amount of people, and hand out a lot of tracts. The coolest moment for me was when some grade school kids came to the platform (in the dark), listened to the gospel, and joined me in prayer during the altar call. Here’s a pic of 3 of them raising their hand after I asked who prayed with me:
As was the case Friday night, we also met a woman who used to minister in churches but hasn’t for several years. She also had a revival fire released in her, and she ended up praying on the microphone for the first time in years. Very cool to see that!
The other big news from Saturday was that our new brother in the Lord AJ got baptized!
He’s doing really well too. We even went to get him all new clothes! Here he is checking out. So proud of him!
The next day on Siesta, although the crowds were small, we had some great Divine appointments. There were a number of newer believers that we got to counsel and pray with, and a number of strong believers that were encouraged. One woman prayed to receive the Lord too, which was awesome!
BIG thanks to all the mighty warriors who came out this past weekend- Amber, Gene, Monte, Pam, Cory, Chuck, Debbie, Trish, Stephanie, Howie, Ken, Mauricio, Jenny, Jeff, Karson, Mike, Ricardo and Michelle. Great work everyone!!
We hope to see you soon on the mission field! Let’s start this new year off right!!
Blessings and love,
Chris, Sofiya and Natalie