Every Neighbor Blessed with Prayer & JESUS DVD!

From Florida, Frank reports the following:

We set out to pray for our neighbors using the pray4everyhome.com website that was suggested to us.  I went to the website and set up my login and they assigned me 100 people with addresses near our home.  Actually, the 100 people lived in 70 homes.  The website provides a neighborhood map. It is possible to select street view and see each home as well as their names, addresses, and languages spoken.

So, I started to pray.  They gave ideas on how to pray for your neighbors, even when you do not know them.  So, after I prayed for all 100 by name, I noticed that it gave me the chance to pray for them again, so I started over, praying for a few names each day.  Then, when I finished the second time it gave me another chance so I began a third time.  That’s when it hit me:  “Why not visit my neighbors, introduce myself to them and tell them how I am investing in my neighborhood?”  So I started to put together a strategy to go door to door:

• Introduce ourselves as neighbors.

• Share about our desire to help needy kids as part of a Christmas outreach from our church. I developed this neighborhood-flyer with our name, address, phone and email information on it.

• Give them something I personally put together for my neighbors: promises-to-live-by.

• Give them a card with our church address and  service times.

• Give them a copy of the new 24-language JESUS Film DVD (A2L).

• Ask them if they have a prayer request we could begin to pray for them.

So, we set aside the month of August to contact the 70 homes.  Things went well from the start.  The only problem was finding people at home, but whenever we talked to our neighbors we found them open to listening to us and receptive as we talked about our desire to give back to those less fortunate than ourselves.  Sometimes we found that people were hesitant to talk to us, but once they found out we were neighbors they warmed up to us.  Sometimes we made it clear that we were not selling anything but just wanted to get to know our neighbors.

 When we went through the contents of our little “welcome package,” one person refused to take it because we talked about our faith in Jesus Christ.  He said, “We don’t want that because we don’t believe in God.”  Things were pretty rocky up until we asked him if there was anything he wanted us to be praying for.  He apparently was very partisan and said, “Pray for Trump.”  Then, the next thing we knew he wanted to sit down and talk politics.  So, we shared comments and pretty soon he started asking us questions about our work and then told us more about himself and actually gave us his business card. 

 Many of the people we talked to asked us to pray for family members with medical problems, but others were having relationship issues at home and asked us to pray for harmony in the home.  Still others asked us to pray for our disunity in our country or for world peace.  I think many Americans today are aware that the fabric of our society in both our country and the world is falling apart, and the one topic of praying for our neighbors touches a very felt need at this time.

 One teacher asked that we pray that he would have greater hunger for the Word of God.  Another believer asked us to pray that God would expand his ministry to others.  One Ukrainian believer goes to a small Slavic church and wanted to invite us over for tea.  A number of the homes had cameras looking down at us and one had a sign posted which read “Smile.  You’re on camera.”

 Oh yes, one of our neighbors asked us to pray that God would help her find a husband. Now, that’s important too, isn’t it?

After visiting several homes and writing down the prayer requests, we realized that we could pray for our neighbors and then go back and see how things are going.  We realized that now we have a point of connection–a place where we can hopefully visit them again and get into a deeper discussion of spiritual issues, perhaps by showing them a short film on our phone.

 In the end, we connected with 53 homes. We found another believer who wanted to use this strategy for the homes in her immediate area and agreed to touch base with 8 homes on our list.  Three homes were empty, and the remaining 6 homes we hope to find at home in the future.  So, all 70 homes were accounted for. Next steps include trying to get each of the community groups in our church to reach out to 100 people in their neighborhoods by Christmas.  How exciting to see what God will do!