friday update

Blessed Portion Friday Night update 5-4-18

Hello Everyone,

We had perfect weather tonight- no rain and the wind calmed down to make it a good evening. Big thanks to Rod and Jennifer Laux, Paige Graber, Jason and Vicki Holman for supplying our meal tonight. Tonight was their first night and we are hoping they will come back again !!!

Our ministries mission statement is that we are focused on feeding and meeting the spiritual and tangible needs of the homeless by being the hands and feet of Christ. As you can see from the picture above we had many "feet" with us tonight and some had to leave before this picture was taken. What I love most in this picture is that you don't see their faces--only their feet and that is how our team is. They are a group of people who have no desire to be seen for their good works...they simply serve others for Jesus. Tonight was no different. I saw our team members talking and laughing with people and even showing some tough love. I saw a group of people all come together for an audience of one--and that is a beautiful thing. Each week brings new challenges, new situations and our team is consistently allowing God to lead them and I love it!!

Tonight we heard 3 men share how cancer is a issue in their family. One mans niece has cancer, another friend found out she has uterine cancer and one friend shared how he just found out he has stage 4 cancer. So our team and those around us took time to lay hands on these people and pray for healing, strength and courage. Or friend who has stage 4 cancer said he has come to terms with it all right now and even though he is in a lot of pain he is also peaceful!!!

We handed out all the blankets, 4 sleeping bags, all the socks and underwear, all the coats and pretty much all the clothes we brought. Another big item we seem to never have enough of is cheater reading glasses from Dollar Tree. Many each week need glasses to read so if you have any please consider donating them so others can read better.

We also tonight heard some good news. One friend has his own apartment (And we need EVERYTHING) for him as he has nothing. He is sleeping on a air mattress and I told him we have a great group of people who follow us on Facebook so I'm pretty sure we could get him started...right?

Lastly one thing that always gets at our hearts is when we have the honor of praying with people. At our last stop tonight we found several who were needing prayer. One lady talked about how tired she is of this kind of life. She was attacked last week and all her items were taken...id, social security card and now she has to start all over again and its not easy to do when your outside. We listened as she sat upon her cold blankets with a little flashlight in the background to give her some sort of light. We ended up giving her some bus passes and some info on what she needs to do and were hoping she takes the advice. Saw where another friend sleeps and sadly he wasn't there. He has been trying to avoid us because we think he feels bad that he has chosen drugs...oh if he only knew that was not needed. Seeing where he was sleeping was HARD!!! Two small pieces of cardboard ripped in half and a small dirty blanket... oh how we are praying for him to see he deserves more than this. As we were leaving from there one of our friends said "Hey, no prayers tonight?" Well we quickly came back and "Yes, we will pray." She though ended up praying for us. She prayed that we would get home safe. That she knows there has to be times when we don't want to come out on a Friday, but we do it anyways and that she was thankful for it. It is very humbling when a person who is sleeping on a wet and dirty ground, and trying to stay warm prays for YOU!!! To top it off this lady a year ago would have NEVER even let you pray for her let alone her pray....so in those little things we see God working and it encourages us!!

So we had a good night, people for the most part were upbeat and joyful and we had a blessed evening. So many need our prayers though.... again as we have said before homelessness is a complicated issue. For our one lady friend who got robbed of her belongings she said there is not enough help for women in Fort Wayne and she is right. For her to be sleeping outside because women's shelters are full is very disheartening- so pray for protection for all who are outside especially the women!!

Thanks to Pathway Community Church, Grace Summit Church, Hamilton Church of Christ, Mark Stebing, Jennifer Lynne Stebing, Sarah Bigelow Lapadot, Auburn Massage and Wellness, Mjs Apparel, Renee Eich- Curneal,Sharon Ringenberg, Randy and Cherrilyn Thomas,Rochelle Bloomfield-Wilson, Christina Scheiber, Lori Williams, Jacquie Aldrich, Scott Wright