Christmas in the City

A Banner Day!

Today (Sunday) was one of those banner days! I wish there were more days like today, but I cherish them when they come.
We at Harbor Mid City held a special outreach event to the community of City Heights called, Christmas in City Heights. The idea behind it is that people from the church purchase gifts through donations and fund-raisers.
Then the people in the church invite friends in the community who are from low-income families. There are a limited number of invitations given. Our desire is to help families that someone in the church has a relationship with.
It takes a tremendous amount of planning, and more than a hundred volunteers to pull the event off.

We invite these families to worship with us. It’s a great time of celebration.
After church we open the Christmas store, where parents can buy presents for their children at much reduced prices. Then we gift wrap the presents for them.
It’s such a great way to bless the community.

God Works Through Weaknesses

I must admit that despite such a wonderful event, and such a wonderful day that I had a bad attitude earlier in the day. God’s Spirit convicted me, and I confessed my struggles. It seemed like after that the clouds parted and skies were blue the rest of the day.
In the afternoon a group of us who were part of the prayer team decided to move our place of operation, because we weren’t getting any “business,” so to speak at the prayer booth. We placed ourselves near the exit, so when the people had already received their gifts we could talk to them.

Many Received the Greatest Gift

As they were walking out we asked them if we could pray for them. Everyone of them said they would like for us to pray for them, once we changed our location. Wow! God really opened the floodgates after that.
Dawn and I along with others on the prayer team spent more than two hours interacting and praying for people. We talked to them about the greatest gift that Christ came to bring through his incarnation, perfect life and sacrificial death on the cross.
The amazing thing was that these people were ripe for the harvest. A number of them prayed to receive Christ with us. I counted at least 15 that gave their life to Christ, but I believe there were more. They were all Spanish speakers, because they make up the majority of the population in City Heights.
Some were moved to tears as they heard the good news, and received the gift of life.

A Moving Story of God’s Grace

All of the people and stories behind them were unique and beautiful. I think my favorite one was with a woman named Elena. She came, because she used to clean the home of one of the woman in our church. Roberto Shim our Spanish-speaking pastor was sharing the gospel with her, and he invited me over.
I had the privilege of being there and supporting them as Roberto explained the gospel message to Elena. Roberto asked her if she wanted to pray to receive Christ, and she responded, “yes”. Then as Roberto was leading her in prayer, she began to cry, so I called Dawn over to comfort Elena.
We continued and Elena with tear-filled joy gave her life to Christ!
Then after a while we saw the woman, who invited Elena to the event. Her name is Ursula. Roberto told Ursula that Elena had come to Christ. Then Ursula began to cry, which touched Elena so that she too wept.
It was beautiful to see God work through so many people. The Lord uses the body of Christ working together in harmony to touch others with the gospel.
The light of Christ shone brightly today in City Heights, and I pray it will only grow to shine brighter.
Thank you for standing with us in prayer. These things only happen as God in his grace moves through his church as we come together to seek and serve him.
In His Grip, Dave
DiasoLifeOnTheBorder.org