2/14/25

-Watery Witness- 

This Sunday we were blessed to join Zach in the celebration of his new life with Christ as he was water baptized and publicly expressed his change in trajectory and commitment to a new way of living and dying! While water baptism is not necessary for salvation, it can be such a wonderful tool of evangelism to those in your life as you provide a witness and testimony of the revelation and power at work within you! Please pray that any seeds planted or watered through the witness of Zach's testimony would take root and grow within their heart!

-City Lights-

This week we visited the residents at City Lights for Valentine's Day Bingo and meal as well as our usual help with food distribution and prayer meeting. We always have such a great time serving at City Lights and are especially grateful for the opportunity to share a meal with them! For the past few weeks, Nick, Viany, and I have been able to share lunch with a group of residents as we pray and encourage each other with scripture! There are changes in management in City Lights that have been increasing stress among the residents and volunteers as rent is dramatically increased as well as various changes that cause disruptions. 

In today's prayer meeting over lunch, we discussed how we can best engage with challenging circumstances and with those who oppose us. It was the perfect occasion for this discussion as we talked and prayed about loving our neighbor and our enemies. Many great things are at work within City Lights, but the impacts of these new management changes have the potential to create new challenges and barriers that we have not had thus far. Please pray for the residents and volunteers at City Lights as they work to navigate these changes. Please pray that the new management would return the rent to manageable rates for these people and not push people out on the streets in their pursuit of profit. 

-Love for the Lepers-

This week, we continued our meetings with *Anthony and got him a full Bible of his own! We had a great time together as we prayed together and dialogued about the passages *Anthony had been reading in Mark. He had so many great questions, but one question that was significant was about the man whom Jesus healed of leprosy. *Anthony asked what leprosy was, so we shared not only about the disease, but also about the cultural responses to lepers. We continued to dialogue about this and *Anthony began to realize how powerful this was. Not only was Jesus unafraid of the ceremonially unclean state of the leper, but He also, by touching the leper, made him clean. Instead of Jesus becoming unclean by touching the leper, the leper became clean by touching Jesus. How powerful is our God! 

We continued in our discussion, and *Anthony asked if Jesus' disciples can heal people like Jesus did because he wanted to pray for his dad's ear which has a constant ring. We looked at the passages where Jesus sends the disciples out to heal and cast out demons, as well as the verses about asking God for things we desire. *Anthony was amazed at these passages, and we encouraged him to pray for his dad's ear and ask God to heal it. We also talked about how sometimes God is doing something bigger through an impairment, and might not heal them right now, but that God always wants us to ask Him. God loves it when His children ask Him to be involved in their lives!