LOVE PURPLE - Explore Archived World Race Alumni Blogs

I am very privilaged and honored to rock a purple pleather jacket aka “the purple J” I am in fact the only girl in whats known as the “purple gang” – I honestly have no idea how or why the “purple gang” got started ( I do know that it was never a real “gang”). I just know that two of my bestest guy friends, Nathan and Mosa had these purple jackets and I loved it, so I was invited to join “the gang.” It consisted of about 5-6 guys all having the same purple pleather jacket. ( Nathan or Mosa if you’re reading this feel free to add)

But the colour purple came to mean alot more to us and so now the jacket for me is much more then “I like the way it looks.” In the city of Red Deer where I have lived for the past 4 years and have the most amazing community, we started a street ministry. After going to the LA Dream Center and ministering to the street people there we wanted to do something in our own city. So my friends Maddie, Nathan, Mosa and myself started going downtown every Wednesday night after helping with youth, staying out to midnight most nights. We walk around handing out water, hot chocolate, granola bars, juice, socks, mitts – whatever we happened to have to give. We offer prayer to everyone we come in contact with and build relationships. This ministry has been going on for alomost 2 years now and we have seen God do incrediable things.

( L to R ) Maddie, Nathan, Mosa

This was not the only ministry we started, we also go into 2 neighbourhoods a week to clean up garbage, and we set up a table of free coffee and hot chocolate outside city hall every 2nd Thursday morning.

We began to pray asking God for names for the different ministries. For our Wednesday night ministry we kept getting the colour purple. After a night of treasure hunting we ended up in front of a mural with a lady in a purple dress praying for someone, and then praying over a boxing club that was painted purple, both are in the downtown area. We kept seeing purple garbage and then three of us had these purple jackets which we always wear on Wednesday nights. So it was set, we needed to have the colour purple in the name. After looking up some of the meanings of the colour purple -Spiritual, Royalty (nobility, luxury, wealth, sophistication), delicate and precious (flowers), more modernly used as the colour to represent being homosexual, Bridge between warm and cold (combination of Red and Blue), passion and sensitivity etc… we decided on the name “Love Purple.” We felt the colour purple could in some way represent ALL of Gods children. Thats what we were out to do – Love Gods children no matter who, what or where.

Ron, our main man on the streets

God has blessed us beyond our expectations in this ministry. We have countless opportunities to pray for people, love people and speak life and truth into them. Prostitutes, drug dealers, Pimps, strippers, drunks, homeless, mentally ill, bar goers, stoners, rich, and poor. Most of these people we now have the most amazing relationship with and alot of them get picked up on Sundays and taken to church.

One of the hardest things for me to leave behind when I came on the World Race was my amazing community and the street people that I have come to love so much. So the “purple J” has come around the world with me. I wanted to “love purple” around the world, while my incrediable friends Maddie, Nathan and Mosa continue to “Love Purple” in Red Deer, Alberta. The jacket reminds me of the incrediable testimonies that have come out of the “Love Purple” ministry just by us being obediant to Gods word and “loving the least of these…”

Currently, “love purple” in Red Deer, Alberta have to take 2 cars every Sunday to pick up all the people that want to come to church from down town, they have helped people get appartments out of the downtown area and are holding a bible study in the downtown Macdonalds every Wednesday night after they are done walking the streets.

None of this is because of what we have done but because of what God has done through us. God fills us up so we can overflow into others. He commands us to Love and when we obey, crazy things happen and lives are changed. So we go and we “Love Purple”