We have been working for two weeks to prepare the church to open up and Thursday night was our first service. We were planning on having a typical church service with prayer, worship and a sermon but at 6:15 our audience solely consisted of about 25 kids 8-10 years old… so we had an improv. kids program and it was awesome! We finished up at 7 and were saying goodbye to the kids, and I of course was running around chasing them and tickling them, and as I jumped out onto the porch I looked up realized a group of people were walking towards us…. as fiften women in their late forties to early sixties slowly labored up the stairs towards me one bold woman stepped forward and asked me in a voice just above a whisper, "Do you have a service for us too?" So half of us ushered the kids outside to play games and the rest of the team threw together an amazing church service. Over 50 people showed up to Worship and hear God's Word the very first night our little church opened its doors and God was all over that place.
Last night was supposed to be our second service and we told the entire community we would begin at 5:30… but our ride didn't show up until 5:45. Around 6pm we rounded the corner to the church and saw one of the little boys, Jon, waiting on the street. His eyes lit up and he literally started jumping in the air smiling, waving and yelling "You're here! You're here!"
As we were praying over the night we were all a little nervous because we were late and didn't have time to go recruit people for the service, and then I got this vision…. I represented the church and I was standing in this beautiful, luscious field of tall green grass. The Words "Ripe for the harvest" were echoing in my head. As I looked up I saw these two hound dogs approaching me. They had their noses to the ground fervently sniffing out some sent that I knew led to me and their tails were wagging like crazy. I shared this with the group as we were praying and declared that this church was about quality, not quantity, and we wanted it to be a light to this community that was so clearly searching for God…. That night two men prayed to receive Christ: a boy about 15 years old named Renaldo and a man in his late fourites named Luis. The first night Luis had been the only man at the service and had asked me to pray for his wife to stop drinking so she would come to the church with him and his kids. He also begged me for a Bible so that he could study the Word with his family, and He wasn't even a Christian yet.
God's Love and God's Hands are all over this church and I truly, honestly, genuinly feel blessed to be a part of what He is doing here. He doesn't need us to be His hands and feet, but He wants us to be.
