Happy Thursday Beloved! And Happy Hannukah!
We hope you had a great Christmas yesterday!!! We had a wonderful time with my family, watching our hometown Chiefs win #15 of the season, watching Natalie on The 700 Club, exchanging gifts, having dinner, and reminiscing about old times. It was great. Here’s us before we left. It was also my dad’s 75th birthday last Friday so he’s sporting the “Birthday King” sash that we got him.
Time definitely is flying though, isn’t it? It’s hard to believe that this is my last update of 2024, and wow, what a year it has been.
I did some math the other day and our little army of over 50 mighty warriors, representing over 10 different churches, has really been used by God in a mighty way this year. I came up with some rough estimates of how many people our team has been able to reach this year with the gospel, and even taking the VERY conservative estimation of 50 people (on average over the entire year) per night at Bayfront, 100 per night at Riverwalk, and 200 people per night at Siesta…we’ve been able to sow in to over 18,000 people during the nearly 160 local outreaches we’ve done this year. We also partnered with The Front and had three epic gatherings at our outreach locations with close to a thousand people total. We’ve also had two people on our outreach team begin to lead outreaches at their local churches, and we’ve seen others on our team get activated into taking the gospel across the nation.
On top of that, our team went to Tampa for Gasparilla, Daytona Beach for the Daytona 500, Ft Lauderdale for Spring Break, Miami and St. Pete for giant “Humble rallys”, and Key West for Fantasy Fest. During these outreaches, we likely reached another 10,000 people easily.
During all these outreaches, we were able to give away close to 10,000 tracts, 5500 bottles of Jesus water, and 300 God’s Promises books. And, of course, there’s no telling how many people have prayed to receive Jesus with us, likely hundreds. It’s also been amazing to see how God has used the testimonies from these outreaches to reach countless others online by causing them to be viewed 10’s of thousands of times on social media. All that to say, it has been a truly amazing KINGDOM year.
Then, on top of all that, yesterday, things went to a whole new level when I had the ultimate Romans 8:28 experience by seeing Natalie’s Miracle Story on TV. To see God take the most intense, desperate, faith shaking experience of my life and turn it around to become a testimony that inspires thousands of people to trust Jesus…was out of this world amazing. It showed me His redemption on a completely new level.
In case you missed it, you can view it here:
Also amazing is that Natalie’s name in Latin actually means “birth of our Lord”. The fact that the story aired on Christmas Day is such a display of God’s sovereignty.
But….speaking of this year, it’s not quite over yet! I’m excited to hit the local mission field one last time again this weekend AND I’m REALLY excited take our last mission trip of the year on New Year’s Eve to Port St. Lucie. We will minister during the day and then we will join thousands of rowdy believers at the Let Us Worship New Years Eve party at night. If you’re not busy, come with us! It’ll be super fun!
Here’s some info: https://bandsintown.com/e/106201904?came_from=297&utm_medium=web&utm_source=copy_link&utm_campaign=event_social_share
As for this past weekend, it was another great one. It was pretty cold out, so we didn’t have huge crowds, but God still moved.
On Friday, just as I was about to pack up, a man named Rob came up and started asking questions about what we were doing. He was a musician too, so he was intrigued. As we got to talking, he opened up and shared that he was a believer, but that he had been away from God for most of his life. He also told me that he was battling the effects of PTSD from his 3 tours of duty in Iraq. He shared some really intense stories of what he’s been through, and he told me that his wife recently kicked him out because he was having violent outbursts. He also has 3 kids.
He had grown up in a more religious environment, so he hadn’t really heard much about the power of God to heal and deliver by the Holy Spirit. We had a great time of fellowship, and I was able to counsel him for over an hour. He prayed to receive Jesus and the Holy Spirit, and God touched him with tears while we prayed. It was really beautiful, and he was so grateful.
On Saturday, we had a great time of ministry at Woodland Village, digging into the Christmas story and pulling out various practical faith lessons from it. You can view it here- https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1YKSUwxdtd/
It was also great to see that the new activity director of the community is better promoting the ministry than the last person was that worked there. They even had this flyer up right by the front door!
At Riverwalk, the biggest highlight was that the young man whom we met last week and prayed to receive Jesus, came back with 3 of his friends from school. I got to minister to them for close to an hour because the crowd was so light. It was great. They said they were believers, but they definitely needed some discipleship, so I was glad we were able to do that. I was also so impressed with the young man- William who brought them. I prophesied over him last week that instead of joining the literal military (which he said he eventually wanted to) that God would recruit him into HIS army, and here we are. Let’s keep praying for him!
These two girls also received ministry on Saturday, which was great.
On Sunday, the crowds were decent, and we definitely reached a lot of people. A number of them even prayed to receive the Lord. A guy from Wisconsin whom we met last year, came with his two sons to help us during their beach vacation and that was a huge blessing too. We also set up the table a little differently and we had some good traffic.
Another great thing that happened this week was that Mark, the former leader of the drum circle who recently opened his heart up to Jesus and quit the circle, met up with us on Christmas Eve and got ministered to. God is really working on him so please keep praying!
Let’s keep the fire burning right into 2025!
Hope to see you soon! Love and blessings!
Chris. Sofiya and Natalie
