Below are some bullet points of the highlights that happened in the Life Issues ministry over the last month:
- One of our leaders helped a student to get a car
- Two of our leaders started teaching a “How to Study the Bible” class at HBF on Monday nights
- One of our students phased up in the Drug Court Program
- One of our students got baptized
- One of our students accepted Christ after being presented the gospel on the phone
- We ordered some new literature from Reformers Unanimous
- We ordered 500 new Life Issues trifolds
- Bryon Calloway and his family left for Zambia Africa on 10-11-16
- We helped a man get from jail to the City Union Mission
- We helped two people get to rehab facilities (but they both decided to leave after a short while)
- We have 2 people going through our TATs program (1 while in prison) and 3 going through The Journey Home
- We started writing to a couple of new people in jail.
- We gave a box or two of food to people this month, took some out to eat, and gave many people rides to our meetings (only about half of our folks have a driver’s license).
- We had an India Mission Trip meeting recently, all of our folks (8 people) now have their Passports and are working on getting Visas, and will soon be purchasing airline tickets (I’ve seen 3 prayers answered already)!
- Amber gave a wonderful testimony on 9-30, and we are looking forward to John Manning’s on 10-28. We are close to posting some of these on our website: www.lifeissuesonline.org under the “Testimonies” tab!
This was Life Issues’ 3rd year to have a booth at the Burnt District Festival (BDF) in Harrisonville MO (9-30 thru 10-1), and overall we had perfect weather and a great location (right next to the square and right next to HBF’s booth)! The BDF is a low cost and low effort event that has high impact and high potential in our community! It seemed like there were a few less people this year than last year, but we had multiple contacts that were fruitful; I personally prayed with a mom whose son is in detox, and talked to another woman with addictions who was near salvation, that said, “I feel so lost”.
The BDF was a great way for us to re-connect with people in our community who hadn’t come to meetings for a while, as well as visit with some of the Drug Court students, so it was good to reconnect and encourage folks that we knew already. We also met some new friends who were allies in the recovery field as well as some new people who are considering coming out to our meetings, in need of recovery. Several of our students helped us staff the booth this year; I was most proud when I overheard one of them telling a stranger that the Lord and Life Issues had saved his life and that he would either be dead or in jail if it weren’t for the Lord and Life Issues!
If you didn’t know it, the BDF is a carnival type atmosphere, with dozens of booths, plenty of food, live music, crafts, and an actual carnival; so we naturally set up our tent, posted our banners, displayed our literature on a table, gave away candy, and this year we gave away walking sticks! Our walking sticks had the wordless gospel in colored beads on them, and we gave away about 430 of them Friday night alone, while telling the gospel with each one! On Saturday night, we were blessed by people from Hope Haven, who came by and wondered if we could use individually packed “toiletries”, which was a tote full of Ziploc baggies; each baggie contained a small bottle of shampoo, body wash, tooth brush, toothpaste, floss, bar soap, etc. We were able to give some away immediately, and then distributed some to the Joshua House, and the rest of them at our weekly meeting! We also passed out around 140 of our trifolds, about 50 gospel tracts, 3 of our HBF Bibles, and 4 big bags of candy at the BDF. Time will tell how much of an impact we made that weekend, but God was in it and we were blessed to be a part of it!
Sincerely, Steve Fleshman – Life Issues pastor and founder, Proverbs 4:23…
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