We started the morning around 6am getting ready for the big St. Patrick's Day Parade Outreach! The events for the day began at 7am at Forerunner School of Ministry (FSM). For about an hour we had a pre-parade meeting. We were informed of things like the parade route, when to meet at the float, parking concerns, etc. We also were given a few encouraging words/stories from the leader of Evangelism Department at the International House of Prayer, Hal Linardt. He encouraged us in our faith for the task ahead...preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ to the crowds gathering for the parade.As we began to pray for the outreach we began to hear rain falling on the roof at FSM. We prayed for the rain to stop, for it to go around Kansas City, etc. We prayed that the Lord would go with us as we evangelized. We prayed for the people coming to the parade.
Then we were separated into our different teams: Face Painting, Street Preachers, Street Worship Teams, Survey Team, Tract Team, etc. Matt & I were on the Survey Team which met in the FSM gym for a brief meeting in which we were broken into groups of three & given clipboards with St. Patrick surveys to quiz the people in the crowds.
We then departed for the parade around 8:45am and arrived downtown Kansas City around 9am with the rain still coming down. We found a parking spot and got bundled up to bare the cold and rain. We had to walk a few blocks to the parade site and when we arrived we began to realize that the crowds were no where to be found. Normally, the crowds begin to pile in to save their spots hours in advance, but the rain seemed to deter them all! We began to wonder what we were going to do...there were no crowds to talk to and survey. We decided to ask the few random people we saw walking by if they would like to take a survey about St. Patrick.
The first man we asked said, "Sure." So, we asked him a few questions about St. Patrick like: What year was he born?, Where was he born and raised?, Why did he go to Ireland?, etc. Then we asked him if he thought St. Patrick went to heaven when he died and if he thought that he would go to heaven when he died. He said that he thought St. Patrick was probably in heaven and that he hoped he would go to heaven when he died because he is a pretty good person.
We told him that the only way to go to heaven is to accept the free gift of Jesus as Lord over your life, to have a relationship with Him, and to trust in the perfect sacrifice that Jesus offered to everyone at the Cross. We asked the man if he would like to accept Jesus as Lord over his life and he said yes! So, we prayed with him leading him in accepting Jesus as his Lord and Savior, it was amazing! I was so encouraged by how well the whole thing went because I haven't done too much evangelism (that is mainly because I get really nervous about doing it). Overall, my group talked to 5 different men; a couple Christians that we were able to pray with and encourage in their faith, and a few unbelievers that we were able to have good conversations with about creation, heaven, hell, and God. We felt like all of our conversations went very well.
After talking to the people we headed back to our car to warm up before we had to be at the
float for the parade. We then headed to the float site and learned that because of the rain we wouldn't have a sound system for the band, lead singer, or St. Patrick. Therefore, all of the marchers behind our float would have to sing out the song, "Grace Like Rain" while doing the choreographed hand motions and freestyle dancing. It was a lot of fun singing, dancing, and marching in the rain as we sang about how the Lord's grace covers us like rain and washes away all of our sins.
p.s. - I think we might even be in the promotional video for next year, if it becomes available I will post it for you to see.
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