Hello again, everyone!

We want to thank you again for your support and prayer for all our team is doing in France!

We passed out many more Bibles this week, we preached to so many, and we’ve prayed fervently for this city as we have led people to the Lord Jesus! 🙂 Here is one story from a time of evangelism…

We had just finished performing our dance and preaching the gospel, and I (Samantha) saw a woman walking by us. She seemed to be in a hurry, but I felt the Lord direct me to talk with her. I interrupted her brisk journey and asked if she had just a couple minutes to speak with me. She accepted, and I proceeded to tell her who I am, where I’m from and why I am in Marseille. We ended up conversing for over 30 minutes.

After informing me of her Muslim faith, she began to give her stance of what she believed, but I could quickly tell that her heart was actually hurting…she was sad about what she believed. She thought God was very angry and a murderer, and I began to gently tell her the truth of God’s character – the Gospel.

The love of the One and Only True God profoundly disarmed this sweet woman of her bitterness. She asked me vulnerable questions, fervently seeking Truth, and I gave her answers straight from the Bible. She admitted that she’d stopped believing because of the evil she’s witnessed in the world; she had questioned why God would allow suffering and assumed the God she had been trusting had let her down.

I told her boldly and kindly that the true God is Jesus, and that He is not the same god that Islam claims. She went from a state of anger, intensely backing up her beliefs, to telling me “I want to believe everything you’re sharing with me…I want Jesus in my life. If I believed and followed Jesus, my life would completely change…He loves us!”

She then had to catch her bus, I’m sad to say, so I didn’t get to pray with her. However, this occurrence added even more to the evidence for intense reaping in this city; the people here are so ready for the Gospel.

They are ready for us to proclaim Truth, repentance of sins, and salvation in Jesus!

Though I cannot mention this woman’s name, please pray that she would be saved and would radically follow Jesus, as well as the MANY that we have met in very similar situations!

More stories…

We shared the gospel on a college campus for an entire day. We took part in a children’s ministry, where we teach Bible stories and pray for healing for any of the kids who are hurting (one little girl’s back was healed!), and we also took advantage of a flower market and purchased roses to pass out to women on the street as a tool to share God’s love and the Gospel.

We had numerous people come as close to salvation as possible, so please pray that they would follow through with giving their lives to Jesus completely.

Mariah, a DTS student, also led a couple to salvation in Jesus. After we danced and preached yesterday, a man and woman came up to us and explained to Mariah that they had researched many religions, and they wanted to know why we believe Jesus is the Only True God. She explained the simple Gospel, and they gladly confessed their sins to the Lord, asked for forgiveness, and confessed Jesus as their Lord and Savior!!!

The Lord is really doing a great work in Marseille. We’re having a great time together–our team has such beautiful unity!

We’re looking forward to having a full last week of ministry here before we begin to wrap things up and head back to Redding. Please pray that we would reap much more of this harvest and see many more come to know Jesus as Truth!

I want to start off this update by saying how incredibly proud we (Sam and Alyssa) are of this DTS. It has been a tremendous honor and pleasure to lead them and see them championed and launched in getting to know God and making Him known!

Every day we go out for hours on end for one reason: to boldly proclaim the good news of Jesus. We pray for the sick and the hurt, and for deliverance from the enemy; we pray for those who are seeking God and desire to know His heart; we pray for prophetic words to bless them with. And, in only a week, the fruit of this has been at least six salvations, and around 8 healings. We have given out at least 30 Bibles all to people who really desired them.
 
I have written down about 50 significant testimonies from individual conversations—these for the most part are not even including when we have preached from a microphone to around 100+ people…there are many more. Praise God! Outreach is SO fruitful!
 
We have met many Muslims who have had dreams of Jesus. They know who the “man in white” is, and they say that in dreams He would deliver them from oppression of the enemy and He says in many dreams “I’m calling you to me—I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life—no one comes to the Father but through Me. I am the Alpha and the Omega.” Praise the Lord for revealing Himself to those lost.

The story pictured at left is of a young man from outside of France who used to be a follower of Jesus but recently chose to pursue alcohol, partying, and other similar choices. He was stunned and inspired by the fact that we had all left our families and our homes to become trained as missionaries—we flew all the way from California to tell people such as this man about salvation in Jesus!

He was humbled by that, and he told us that we could pray for him, since he admitted to his knee actually hurting a lot. After praying for his knee (which at the time was in much pain), he laughed and overflowed with joy as he said, “I would be lying to you if I said that the pain didn’t completely leave.” His eyes were opened to the reality and resurrection power of Jesus, and he said that for the first time in a while, he really wanted to get back into church! He had two friends with him and by them also witnessing, they too didn’t want to just be “Christians” in the sense of what my generation thinks that means, but they were inspired and awakened to really live their lives for Jesus.

Many young people such as these have been touched by our obedience to Jesus. Through simply sharing the gospel and our testimonies with our French peers, lives are truly being transformed!

Stories From our Final Day in Fremont

Greetings from France!

We arrived safely in Marseille just 2 short days ago. Though our team fought against jet-lag, we spent our first day getting set up and getting the ball rolling.

We have already had a few encounters and cannot wait to share the stories that are sure to unfold in our next update. Please be praying for energy, joy, unity, and divine encounters for our team!

This week, we wanted to take a moment to share some final thoughts on our Fremont for Jesus outreach.

On Sunday, the majority of our base took off for Redding before going down to a conference in Chico, CA. This left just our students and outreach leaders, along with the community members in Fremont, to finish out our last day of evangelism.

By this point we had already seen over 50 salvations and were celebrating what the Lord had done. I don’t think any of us anticipated what was about to happen to give us even more reason to rejoice!

We went out, as usual, to share and pass out materials door to door before heading over to Elizabeth Park. We decided to have the students perform their dance one more time and had them set up by the playground. A group of 11 kids quickly formed.

At the end of the performance, Enoch and Kelly jumped in and immediately started sharing the Gospel with the little ones. She asked the crowd of children, after explaining to them who Jesus is, and about an experience she had where she felt Jesus hug her, if they would like to ask Jesus into their hearts. In response several of the kids raised their hands and a couple responded with a “Yes”.

All of a sudden one of the little girls yelled out,”I want to go to the Kingdom!” You can imagine the shock on all of our faces to hear such a comment from one so little! The general age seemed to range from about 4 or 5 to 8 and 10 at the absolute most, but regardless, these little ones understood what they were being invited to and one of them vocalized it perfectly!

“From the lips of children and infants you. Lord, have called forth your praise” (Matthew 21:16)

She got it! I can tell you, for certain, that I have never heard a child say such a thing before and it was one of the sweetest moments observed all of outreach!

Following her response, Kelly replied with another question, “Who wants to go the Kingdom?” All the kids began to erupt with hands and voices lifted high eager to go to the Kingdom; to go home. A home they have always longed for yet never known. All 11 children gave their lives to Jesus right there on the spot with Kelly and all professed out loud their belief in Jesus Christ King of our Kingdom! Such a sweet moment!

At the end of our time, we all gathered together to share more testimonies since we had split into smaller groups. By the end of all the stories we realized that 16 people, including the 11 children, had given their lives to Jesus that day! This quickly put the number of salvations in Fremont from about 50 to almost 70!

This was not only during our last day in Fremont, but also our very last night to be exact within our very last hour of evangelism! We saw five more salvations at the park within that short time frame making our last day of evangelism our single most visibly fruitful day! Praise the Lord!

While we may have His heart as our own and a desire to do the will of our Father at the end, and of course at the beginning, of each day, we find ourselves in bewilderment about the things He has planned for us to do and see never fully knowing what lies beyond the horizon of each moment He mercifully blesses us with!

May this be an encouragement, as well as a reminder to us all that our Father is good and eager to bring all of His Children into the Kingdom, both big and small, and often times our only part in this divine orchestration may very well just be asking those around us, “Would you like to go to the Kingdom?”

Halal Festival, Door to Door and a Ton of Salvations!

We are on our fourth week of outreach in Fremont, California! God has been doing some incredible things.  Our team, as a whole, has seen around 40 salvations in the last four weeks, and multiple people have been healed! It has been an amazing experience to watch God come and bring breakthrough in people’s hearts.

This week, we have had the privilege of going to the Halal festival in Fremont, California. It was one of the most rewarding experiences that we have had down here. Mariah, Enoch, Kelly, Allan and Sam all performed the dance that they have been working hard on during  DTS! After drawing a significant audience, our students, staff, and guest shared their testimonies, passionately illustrating the ways in which Jesus has transformed their lives.

As an added bonus, God blessed our team that night with free tickets to a San Jose Giants game, a much appreciated break.

Now, we get to the best part: testimonies!
During the Halal festival, Gina, a staff member with our outreach partner, Convergence House of Prayer, experienced a profoundly personal moment with three Persian women.

She and a few other participants decided to stand beyond the doors of the Halal festival and hand out free water and Bibles. There was a group of three women who approached Gina to see what was going on, a perfect opportunity for her to offer free water, both physically and spiritually.  She then felt led to ask the women if any of them needed healing. Turns out, all three of them were experiencing physical ailments, and each of the women promised to come to the healing rooms and the prayer house later that week. While they didn’t give their lives to Jesus in the moment, all three of these precious individuals are intently open to hearing the full truth of the Gospel.

We have also been continuing our door to door evangelism, and I would love to share this testimony with you as well! We have two community members that have been joining us for evangelism almost daily named Lidia and Doug. The other day they had an encounter with a young Native American man who said that he knew Christ and had been baptized but Lidia had a sense that this man needed more. So she asked him if he needed more of the Holy Spirit, so they both received permission to pray and this man had such a strong encounter with the Lord that he ended up falling forward on top of them under the power of the Holy Spirit. This man knew about Jesus but he was finally brought into the fullness of who God is and was baptized in the Holy Spirit!

One last testimony…

Two members of our staff, Susanna and Meghan, went out to evangelism late at night, after a long day of planning, leaving only about an hour to go out and share the Gospel. After praying about which house to approach, they met a young man named Fred who formerly served in the military. Susanna asked if he had ever heard the full Gospel of Jesus; he said no. Susanna then shared a brief overview of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation.

Meghan received a word of knowledge that he was a good dad to his daughter, and that his love for his daughter was nothing compared to the Love that God has for us. After that, Susanna asked Fred if he would like to give his life to Jesus. He responded positively, the only hindrance being the desire to have his family with him in the moment, a hindrance the Lord quickly overcame, beckoning Fred into salvation.