Being led by the Holy Spirit, I was moved to go door to door and give out books to the community. With the help of my mentor and my fellow church family, we gave away an estimated 10 Bibles, 60 Steps to Christ, 40 Desire of Ages, and 40 Great Hope books after just three ventures. We knew God was with us already on the first outing! It was a gloomy day filled with downpours. Before even leaving the parking lot, the group was already feeling doubtful that we would find success. Thankfully after words of encouragement and prayer we decided to give it a go.
Before leaving, we prayed and asked; Oh Lord, please give us just one hour of dryness. By God’s blessing, the pouring rain turned into sunshine. It was wonderful offering spiritual and emotional support to the community. Our group was truly intergenerational: from age six to as old as 85. This in itself was a blessing. It was a beautiful sight to see how God used all of our ages to witness to our community, from the children offering their own witnessing through prayer, or the elders of our group sharing their wisdom, to the many stories from our very own Granny Mo. The intergenerational involvement in our ministry has proven to be essential to portraying an inviting, loving, and family atmosphere.
After this first giveaway of almost two full bags of books and taking multiple prayer requests, we headed back to our cars. Within moments, the sky had changed from blue to black. We very quickly found ourselves sprinting through a downpour. When we made it to the dryness of our vehicles the clock had revealed to us that from the time we prayed for dryness to the time the downpour began, exactly one hour had passed….to the very minute.
During our second venture we learned very quickly that satan was very displeased with our newly formed ministry. Upon reaching the halfway point, we reached an apartment building. Seeing that a woman was leaving the building and moving to her car, I quickly tried to get her attention.
“I’m not interested, and nobody in that building is going to open their doors,” she very sternly voiced and drove off. Troubled by her comments, I prayed silently to myself and felt an urging from the Holy Spirit. Running to the group, I urged them that we should go into that building. “What’s more important in the eyes of the Lord?” I asked them, “Knocking on the door and not getting an answer? Or choosing not to knock on the door at all because we assume there won’t be an answer?” With that we prayed together and went into the building.
Not only did we discover that 10 of the 12 doors were opened but we left that building with only one Bible and three books remaining that day. While inside, we found three people, both young and old, asking us questions about Scripture. Seven of the ten residents who opened their doors allowed us to pray with them. One man, who happened to be at the last door we knocked on, had given us quite a surprise. We were blessed with the opportunity to spiritually uplift a very discouraged person struggling with very difficult personal issues. What began as tears finished in hugs, and a man being thankful for us simply just listening. Although he didn’t want us to pray with him, he was very very grateful that we promised to keep him in our prayers.
Our third and final venture of the year was the best one yet! We said “satan, get thee behind us,” and after once again having multiple opportunities of praying with families and giving emotional support to some more people from the community, for the first time we ran out of books.
Overall, this experience has shown us the power that an intergenerational group holds when surrendering themselves to the glory of God. Because we are intergenerational, we match perfectly with the community. We are a family just like they are a family. And now, as the cold of winter draws near we have put our ministry on pause. However, as we eagerly wait for spring to come our everyday prayer continues to be, “Oh Lord in heaven, please bless us this winter as we prepare to resume in spring sharing Your love and character with our community.”
By Brad Bartlett. Waukesha Community Seventh-day Adventist Church
