I described on Thursday our Valentine’s Day giftbag project. We handed out 35 gift bags today.
All in all it was a good experience. Lots of folks didn’t come to their doors, so we left the bags outside the door. A few seemed overwhelmed. Two asked what kind of church we are. (My answer: A third wave charismatic-evangelical church dialoguing through emergence and exhibiting Kingdom dynamism and discovering incarnational reality with a triune Godhead”. Not :-)). One said he might visit us sometime.
One elderly guy was inside his house mumbling, then I realized he was yelling “SCRAM!” That was funny. My family was joined by another family, actually my wife’s sister and her kids (8 and 5 or so). They had fun handing out bags. Even to Scram Man. (When we left that house, the 5 year old yelled at us “that was a BAD GUY!”. Perhaps, but let’s say that a bit quieter :-)). The kids had a good time. They took one of the gift bags to give to their vet, to whom they were taking their sick cat. We gave the remaining 3 bags away at the gas station on the way home as we gassed up our car.
Nearly all the residents there were older people, though some were mid-40s men. Almost all were alone, at least when they came to the door.
We have some prayer touchpoints now. We’ll be praying for the lady who appeared to have a black eye. We’ll pray for the skinny 40-something guy around whom I sensed some spiritual upheaval. We’ll pray for the elderly Asian woman who seemed most impacted. We’ll pray for the 40-something guy, and for his 60-something mother who lived across the street, the folks who invited us right in and were very welcoming. We’ll pray for Scram Man.