“Keep the main thing the main thing: Jesus”
On Friday morning we began the day with breakfast, as usual. Then we had a time of worship and devotion. Pastor Kathy taught about “the 5 keys”. Pastor Kathy is the director/ pastor of the women’s home from Pittsburgh. Her sermon started the day well, even though the team wasn’t fully awake, how many know that the Holy Spirit doesn’t sleep? One of her phrases was, “keep the main thing the main thing, Jesus”. After the encouraging sermon, we went out into the neighborhood canvassing. There were four teams and 1 whole new section of the city. Today the teams worked best together! It was our last day of canvassing and we knocked out the entire new section of the city. While the teams were out canvassing, Danielle painted a beautiful mural in the nursery (which is displayed in the picture section of the blog).
After a long days work, the team grouped back at the church for lunch. After lunch, we broke up into groups. Some people cleaned the parking lot, while others continued canvassing. I was apart of the group who cleaned the parking lot. I believe that the parking lot was a symbol for Reading. Broken beer bottles, cigar wrappers, trash, and broken toys were throughout the parking lot. Some people would look at that parking lot as a “dump” or useless, unable to produce, but we took the time to see the vision, see the value, and clean it up, so the very next day there could be games, food, and fun. On Friday, the parking lot was full of trash, on Saturday the parking lot was full of families, moon bounces, candy, hot dogs, music, and dancing. Some people walked by and thanked us for cleaning their town; we had a sense of pride and hope in a place where the people have lost all hope.
After there was clean up, the Pittsburgh team and ours had our final dinner together, and then there was service. I personally love when people use their God given gifts to further the kingdom, and tonight there were plenty of gifts being used. First Danielle sang a beautiful song that she wrote, and then Ashley gave her testimony of how God healed her. Some people participated in a funny skit called “Way to get to heaven”, the skit emphasized that Jesus is the only way to get to heaven, not good works or friends. This set the stage for Pastor Angelo’s sermon called “Fugheddaboutit”. He talked about faith and God working and forgetting about the past. Then, there was an altar call for those who want to accept Jesus and others who have never been baptized in tongues. You could feel the Holy Spirit in that church that night, just thinking about it gives me goose bumps. About five people got baptized in the Holy Spirit and three accepted God as their personal Savior.
This is just the beginning of the City Outreach Church, and we are so excited to see how God is going to work through it! So many people were accepting of what we had to say, and many came to the church during the nights. Continue to pray, not only for the church, but for the hearts of the people in Reading. After hearing the stories of the people, the things they live through day by day, the worthlessness and lack of love they feel, the one thing that can heal their hearts and heal their land is JESUS.
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