A four year old boy, wrecked me...

Hello Friends,

Thanks for coming back to the BLOG this week.  I'm eager to share what happened yesterday at a "Church Without Walls."  Last week, we decided that we would change it up a little and do something different for our homeless friends.  There are a few men who are really drawn to us, so we thought it would be nice to just take them out for the day.  I had an impression from the Lord that he was calling us to just be there friends, so we took them on a road trip to Richmond, VA and spent the day at the Richmond Outreach Center (ROC).

Before I tell you about our day, though, I want to share a testimony of something that happened to me this week.  I was attending a conference for my job and then on Friday I was playing in a golf outing with some of our customers and industry peers.  Well, we haven't received a lot of ministry money lately and we had around $60.00 left in the ministry account that I was planning to use for our road trip to Richmond.  I was in faith that the Lord would provide, but wasn't exactly sure how.  Friday, I arrived at the golf outing and to my surprise, my partner and I were paired up with two other guys.  They were extremely good at golf - and to make a long story short - we won the tournament and all received  a $100 gift card to Home Depot.  I was super excited, as I saw this as God's hand of provision for the Homeless Shelter we are working on.

Also, each person in the golf outing received a bag with some goodies and a raffle ticket.  After they handed out all of the awards for the golf tournament, they started to prepare for the raffle drawing.  I whispered a quick prayer and said, "Lord, please let me win this raffle and all of the money will go into the homeless ministry."  They drew the ticket and the lady called my number!  I just started laughing out loud, as I was like, "Lord, you've got to be kidding."  I left the tournament with $650.00 for the ministry.  That's the God we serve and he did provide for our day in Richmond and for many other needs we have.

Aaron Ransom arrived at my house at around 10:30 am on Saturday and we hopped in my car to go pick up our homeless friends in the city.  We were loaded up and on the road by a little after 11:00 am.  It was me, Aaron, Jermaine, Allen and Bryan and we were on our way.  We stopped at KFC and we all had lunch together.  It was nice to sit down and have a meal and talk with our friends.  We arrived at the ROC at around 1:15 pm and went in to the sanctuary to watch how they did "kids bus ministry."  Here we saw 1000 + kids worshipping the Lord with sincere passion and a ton of energy.  They modeled the undignified dance of David and I understood why God loved them so much.  It was awesome!

After the children's ministry, my brother in law Harry had arranged for us to go on the "adult bus ministry," with one of the pastors.  Aaron and I went on one of the buses to go pick up adults out of some of the roughest projects in Richmond.  I must confess, it was pretty intimidating as there were thugs everywhere and a lot of activity in general.  But, I knew that the Lord was with us and we would be OK.  We arrived at the first project where me and Eric went to the door to pick up our first guest.  We walked through a crowd of thugs who looked me up and down, I believe sizing me up to see if I was a cop.  :)  I greeted them politely and continued down the ally to the house where we were going.  We knocked and a little four year old boy named Israel answered.  He was the cutest little guy we became buddies, quickly.  He said, "call me Izzy," to which I agreed.  :)  Izzy came out with his mom, sister and sister's friend.  We escorted them to the bus. 

Izzy liked me and found it funny to steal my nose and then charge me a nickle to get it back.  He racked up on my pocket change.  This little boy was full of life and I realized that he didn't have a father.  He was being raised by his mom, who appeared to be very stressed out.  Izzy and I played rock, paper, scissors and the give me five, you're too slow game.  We both had a lot of fun.  He wanted to be a secret agent, so I gave him my sun glasses to assist him in playing his part.  He was so funny!  Here's a little boy who likes to have fun like my little boys.  I was so sad to leave him knowing that he didn't have a dad and he was going to be dropped off in one of the most drug infested parts of the Richmond inner city.  There were others that we picked up, but Izzy is who the Lord gave me last night.

Well, we arrived back at the ROC for the 6 o'clock service.  There are several buses that go to the projects on different routes and bring the adults/families back to church.  I realized that if the ROC didn't have the buses, many folks would not have the opportunity to attend.  Most of them have no transportation.  This is one of the fastest growing churches in America and they just received an award from Bob McDonald (Governor of VA) for volunteerism in the community.  This Church is like none I've seen before, but I watched the Lord show up in power. 

As a matter of fact, my 3 friends Jermaine, Allen, and Bryan accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior after the preaching of the word by Pastor G.  I saw people getting baptized right on the spot.  I saw people handing out food from the food pantry.  I saw drunk people, crippled people, black people, white people all together encountering Jesus.  What a perfect picture of the Church Jesus would have attended.  I saw several people - who you could tell - had a rough life give themselves to Jesus Christ. 

Also, 2 of my 3 friends were accepted into the discipleship homes at the ROC and will be returning to Richmond on Thursday to live.  The Church disciples them through the teaching and preaching of the word, they work at the church cleaning, keeping grounds, etc.  Allen and Bryan will be there for a minimum of 6 months being discipled in Christ. 

Wow...what an awesome day!  To top it all off we all went to Jason's Deli after Church and had a meal with my sister and her family.  My 3 friends were excited and smiling.  When we were on our way home Jermaine said, "Jim, I can't stop smiling!"  I said, "Jermaine, Christ saved you tonight and that's why!"  He just continued to smile. 

God has charged me with this...I'm going to the inner city of downtown Norfolk, in His power and wreaking havoc on the kingdom of darkness.  We've got to go take the gospel for the sake of the Izzy's of the world.  He's innocent!  Who's in?

Walking in his power,

Jimmy