This past week I had the wonderful opportunity of being able to go and participate in a local outreach that my college group did at the Light Rail stations. We met up at our church, got our Light Rail stations and groups assigned and split off to go and pay for people's tickets and pray for them.
I must admit, I haven't done much outreach before, so I was nervous about talking to people and how they would react. Once my group got to our Light Rail station, it wasn't busy at first and I was wondering how many people we would end up being able to buy tickets for. My group ended up splitting in half, so three of us walked along the platform and the other three of us stayed at the ticket kiosk. As people came up to the kiosk, we would offer to buy their tickets. In the end we ended up buying 12 people tickets, which in this case was a lot and such an amazing thing to do. However, it was not the buying of tickets that had a huge impact on me -- it was the people we were buying tickets for. Between all six of us in my group, we had to have talked to at least 20 people and that was so amazing.
There were so many people that myself and my half of our group talked to, it was so humbling and amazing. When we asked people if we could pray for them, so many of the people were so willing to just tell us what they were dealing with and what they needed prayer for. There was even one lady, who was going through a lot and she still knew that God was in control and that was just so humbling because so many times, I see people just get torn down and loose touch because of struggles that they are facing. Yet this lady was still so faithful to God and it was just such an amazing thing to see, especially after hearing all that she was dealing with.
Throughout this whole experience, I got so comfortable doing outreach and I left felling so humbled and just in complete awe of how even something as simple as buying someone's Light Rail ticket could have a huge impact on them, as well as in yourself. I'm not saying I didn't know this before, but after this outreach, I have a whole new perspective on it. Recently, there has been a lot of talk of outreach and missions at my church and in my life and I feel like God is calling me to take part in missions and I couldn't be more excited to see where God takes me on this path. Through such a simple night, God ended up teaching me so much. I would highly recommend, if you have the opportunity, to go and do a local outreach or go on a mission trip because you have no idea how God will use that to change your life, as well as changing the lives of others.
