So Surprising

To quote Gomer Pyle AKA Jim Neighbors, yesterday was a surprise, surprise, surprise day. I went out with our youth pastor, Pastor Christian Garcia and another church member to visit parents of some of the youth and children of Mt. Zion Community Church’s Wednesday night youth and teen meetings. Recently I’ve taken over the van ministry for the people who need a ride to services for Sunday morning and Wednesday evenings. I needed to be introduced to the parents so they knew who was calling to arrange transportation for their children and not just an older male voice on a phone or a stranger texting them.

While we were out, we began to stop at other homes along the van route that had children’s toys in the yard. We want to expand our van ministry by speaking to parents and sharing our ministry for young people. Our services starts at 7 P. M. on Wednesday evenings and end a bit after 8 P. M. There will be an ice cream service of Wednesday June 6^th, 2021 for the youth that attend and we wanted to share that invitation to as many youth that wanted to come. We began to knock on a few other doors when we saw someone outside and invited the adults to visit our church or to tune into our live-stream services to sample what our ministry was like and to share the Gospel message to ore people.

We shared door-hangers that gave the Gospel message and Mt. Zion’s computer site. There were several friendly greetings and pleasant conversations with those we visited. There was one woman who called through an open window, “We don’t want any” even when I explained why we were there. We stopped because there were toys in the yard.

As Pastor Garcia drove, we shared stories and ideas of past occurrences and for future events. I was shocked when Pastor Garcia said he thought I was 50 years old. I motioned higher. Then he asked, “60?” I laughed and told him I was 72. He shared his disbelief saying he would have never guessed I was that old, even after I’ve told him in the past that I was an old man.

The rest of the trip was relatively uneventful, but we were able to talk with several more people and make more contacts passing out the Gospel message to others.