Neighborhood Ministry

Greetings-Many of you may have heard bits and pieces of what is going on in my life but I want to share the story of my last few months: In July of this year one of my former youth group kids asked if I would start praying with him at 5:30 am every weekday. It took me a while but eventually said yes. Over the course of some months we added others.
In September I was thinking I was going to be taking on a full time ministry job. After visiting the church I was pretty discouraged what God had for me. The day after visiting the church and knowing God had closed the door I was sitting reading a book about a ministry in California who had thrown a birthday party for a homeless man. In the midst of reading this book I felt a prompting (which I believe came from God) to go and pray for my neighbors. My neighborhood is a typical midle class neighborhood but there is a trailer park across the street to the entrance of my neighborhood. I have lived in my neighborhood for 5 years and what little bit I knew about the park was all bad. I had never been to the park but knew there were sex offenders living there. I called up our church maintance man Doug McGowan and he agreed to go and pray with me in the park. We knocked on 8 doors and were rejected each time including a blind lady. I was furious at God, I thought here I sacrifice for you and all I get is rejected. Doug asked if he could knock on one more door. In this trailer a man named Jimmy lived. Jimmy invited us in and we heard his story for the next hour.We prayed with him and in the course of a couple months he has become a follower of Jesus.
Here is his story:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5e74IWU02s

Through many other circumstances and situations we met Tiffany. Jimmy called us a couple of weeks later. He had found a resident of the park lying in the fetal position in the corner of her trailer. Doug and I went to the trailer and there she was in the condition that was described to us. She was in the midst of a heroin overdose.
Here is her story:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMX7i_bcDrI

Since those events we have started a Bible Study/house church in this park. We currently have 8 of the 14 units involved in the Bible Study. We have expanded and are now doing Bible Studies in another park and in the next month have 4 more parks that are interested in having us come in. Our mission is to Shine God's love to our neighbors. We are doing this by partnering with other Christians and churches. This video was done a couple of weeks ago at one of the Bible studies in the orignal park (which we have begun calling Agape Park). We have seen 7 people give their lives to Christ and numerous others begin turning their lives around.We feel that our job is to follow as God leads and He will change people not us. That has been so freeing knowing that God changes people not us.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ioQDbGXUQI

Even as you pray please pray for us. There are so many in the northwest Indiana community who have been hammered so long by darkness that having people come into their neighborhoods to provide light is so refreshing for them.
If you are interested in following the stories we have a blogwww.neighborhoodministry.blogspot.com I hope that you all have a great new year and I just wanted to share what I saw God do in 2009,
Ben