About 26 people showed-up at Zion Church for the street ministry, about 8 of them were ffirst-timers Kevin played a short video of a blind lady who had been healed on the streets an hour earlier.
At Portage Place several leaders were appointed of which I was one. Another team had immediately engaged a man in a wheelchair, and invited our team to join them in praying. I wasn’t able to get close enough to hear his requests or team members prayers. When team members were finished praying, I did hear him say he wanted to get baptized, so I gave him a Zion Church card, and assured him the church would baptize him. He wanted to know how that would be possible seeing he was in a wheelchair. We assured him the church would find a way.
Our team’s next encounter was with a group of 4 First Nations people in the food court. I approached the table and asked if anyone needed prayer. Two of them found my question very funny, for some unknown reason, and they got up and left. The other two were Shirley and Andy. Shirley had arthritic pain in her feet that she wanted prayer for. We prayed for her, but she said the pain was still there. She got up to walk, but she confirmed the pain had not improved. We continued to pray, but there was no change. We then turned our attention to Andy, who had pain down both his sides all the way to his feet. We prayed for him but he also didn’t receive any relief from his pain. At this point Gaylene, one of our team members left, and began to engage with other people. We also had an Andy on our team, and as we left to join Gaylene, our Andy was getting the other Andy’s e-mail info so he could stay in touch. Kevin’s wife, Jackie, had made some cards with words of encouragement for us to give away, and I gave one to Shirley and prayed a blessing over her. As I left she was busy reading the card, and appeared pleased to receive it.
As we joined Gaylene she had 2 encounters going on. One was with a very drunk (high?) First Nations man who was asking for food, but she wasn’t giving him any. I found out later the reason was, because she felt, as a very low income missionary, she couldn’t afford to give out any money. Had I known that at the time I would have bought him some food, or given her money so she could. The other man was a well groomed Jamaican. He was lecturing us on all kinds of subjects, and wouldn’t give us any opportunity to speak. We learned he has had 7 wives, he has 11 children, and he is mad at the church, because they asked him to tithe. I decided the Jamaican was a diversion to keep us from our ministry, so I went back to find our Andy, and suggest we move on to the park. I found Andy surrounded by about 6 people that he was engaged with. He seemed settled in so we left without him. As we left the mall the drunk First Nations man lifted his hand and gave us ‘the finger’.
On the way to the park, a First Nations lady asked us for food and bus fare. I bought her some food, Gerald gave her money for bus fare, and Gaylene prayed for her. At the park, we encountered another team of ladies who were praying for a First Nations lady in a wheel chair, and there was another First Nations lady waiting for prayer. It seemed to be a ladies only prayer time, so Gerald and I stepped back and visited. During the prayer time the lady got out of her wheelchair and took some steps, but when she left she was still in her chair. I am not sure what happened, because we were distracted by a younger Yemenite man that had walked-up to Gerald and I and we were engaged with him for a long time. He some how knew we were Christians and he wanted to set us straight on the truth. His main premise was that Jesus could not be God, because God cannot die. The resurrection never happened according to him – at best Jesus was a prophet like Mohamed. He said he had travelled the world, prayed for truth, and God speaks to him, and was even speaking through him right then. He said the way to truth was to only believe in God – not Jesus – nor Mohamed – just God. He lectured us, and before we could respond he quickly walked away. Interesting encounter – not sure what that was about. Maybe a missed opportunity on our part.
It was 9:30, getting dark, and the park was almost empty, time to go home. We looked around, but other team members had left, so we were unable to debrief with anyone. Not sure what other teams experienced.