Chicago and Boston

Hey all,
I was finally able to hop onto the internet long enough to post something! I hope everybody reading this is doing well.

So first of all, the team is now on outreach. We've been to Nashville, Chicago, a town in Michigan, and are just about to leave Boston. We are heading to New York City, Maryland/D.C area, and Atlanta.

We stay in each location for about 8 days or so, and do a variety of things, but the two main things are practical work and a lot of evangelism. It's absolutely nuts to see how much I am learning about evangelism, about people, about myself, and more recently, about leadership.

In Chicago, we did a lot of prayer-walks. Which to be totally honest, I used to think were lame. But it blows me away how much of a heart you can get for a place being in it while interceding for it. In the last year, my mind has definitely been changed about those. But the highlight was going to the gay pride parade. There were 500,000 homosexuals (men and women) in a couple of square blocks. I will never forget what I saw there and how it broke my heart. The majority down there were drunk or high, and many were semi-nude and all over each other. I've never been in a place that got as gross that area-and predominantly everything the homosexuality is what made it that way (alcohol, drugs, sex). After looking past the preliminary stuff, I almost cried because I looked around and saw a depth to a brokenness, I saw all of these people who all have a horrible story of something that happened to them, some reason they are where they are, and to see how far they have fallen from who they were created to be was hard to watch. I won't go into the depths of what God did in me in Chicago, but it was huge. We went down and 20 of us passed out 2200 water bottles for free and told people we were Christians and wanted to bless them, and that although we agree or support what they are doing there, we love them. I was able to have some really good, long conversations there as well. The next day we helped clean up the streets where the parade had gone.

I will tag on this one last thing about the gay pride parade. The thing that upset me the most the whole day it took place was the other Christians there. There were two groups. The first all were yelling and telling them they were going to hell and they needed to repent-and while it is true they need to repent, and apart from true salvation through Christ, eternal separation from God is their punishment; they were not lovingly conveying that message at all, and in doing so were just a resounding gong (biblically speaking). However, shortly after all the repent signs and yelling Christians passed by, a really raunchy float passed by followed by 50 Churches in the Chicago area alone who were part of the parade and supported the Gay movement and were known as "Gay Churches". 50 CHURCHES. In the Chicago area alone. I mean I know that the church has well established a history of hating Gays, and that needs to be dealt with. But I had no idea that any church would honestly preach that God created some people Gay and God wants Gays to stay Gay. That is in direct opposition with the bible, and against the entire message of what the gospel says one must do with anything the bible calls sin.

Needless to say, Chicago exposed a lot of things to me that I had no idea were legitimate problems.

In Michigan we worked with a Church there for two days, did a good deal of manual labor and ran a church service until a storm knocked out the power.

I was on the team that led the Boston portion of the outreach, and it was a great time in this city. We did have a lot of opposition getting here-starting with a journey that turned from a 15 hour drive with food stops to a 24 hour straight drive with food on the road. But once here, we did a lot of evangelism, and I will hopefully will be able to throw a few stories up here soon. I am continuing to be broken by God and remade into what I know I have to become for God to get the glory He deserves out of my life. I've still got tons to learn, but God's being faithful to finish what He has started in me.

Thanks for the prayers, We-And especially me, need them.
We are heading to New York, and that's been a piece of work too, so please continue praying.

Love,
-Nate