Friday, July 26, 2003
Greetings friends,
I thought I'd share a brief entry from my journal today. We are in Holland for 1 week visiting a ministry called FIRE HOLLAND which was birthed out of the Brownsville Revival in Pensacola Florida. Good morning Holland! Another good night's sleep. We are sleeping in bunk beds in Greg and Luke's room. Thank you Lord! I'd like to try and write about my experience in Amsterdam last night.
The group of 50-70 from the Fire School (the 3 week school Greg runs here) left from the camp where the school is held and drove to the down town section of Amsterdam. It took us about an hour+ to get there. I rode in a van with Dan (from Michigan) driving. Sitting next to Steve Alt, (the teacher from the Fire school) behind me were three young adults: Bart from Poland, Annericca from Holland and Judith from Germany. Dan dropped us off and Annericca led us from the van to the center of the city where there is a concrete sitting area (a park?) where people sit and where drug dealers do their business. Soon, the whole team arrived and Greg gave us some direction. We were going to begin with some preaching and then break up into groups of two and go through the crowd to witness. Burt (the morning teacher at the Fire school) did what I might call singing/preaching. He would preach a line or two with a melody "… Its time to wake up…."
Immediately following Burt's sentence was an interpretation from a guy from Holland. This went on for about 10-15 minutes and then we prayed and broke into groups of two. I introduced myself to Josh (from the Fire Holland group) and asked if he wanted to "go into all the world to preach the gospel? " He said he had never done this before so I encouraged him to follow my lead. The first person we went to was a catholic young man about 20-22 who spoke broken English. We asked him what he thought about the message and talked to us for a few minutes about what he believed. I asked him if we could pray for him and he said yes and the Lord gave me wisdom. The next guy we went to was very closed but respectful. We only had a few minutes with him and he did not want us to pray for him. So, I suggested to Josh that we simply stand up, move 1-2 feet away and pray for him right there. We did and God again gave me wisdom for how to pray for his hard heart. I really enjoyed being among this ministry. I feel like I haven't done this in a long time. It is refreshing!
Josh and I had several more good encounters and each person let us pray for them. The last guy we talked to even asked us "what do I need to do to be saved". It is interesting what came out of my mouth (and heart) in answer to such a question. I firmly believe that God gave me wisdom and discernment to answer his question in a way that was appropriate to this man's life. I'm convinced that Jesus meets us in the 'going' and confirms his word with our faith in action. Like Jesus response to the rich young ruler, I felt like the Lord gave me a specific word for this man. Thank you Lord Jesus!
The group soon gathered back together for a 'circle-up' time for prayer. Then, Greg did some preaching. His style was a bit more traditional. Soon, we broke up again and went out in two's. I took lots of photos of the team speaking to the people in groups of two. After people had finished speaking in groups of twos in the audience, our team divided up into men and women. The women went to the Red-light district with roses to give to the prostitutes. The men went with Greg and we walked through the same area. Greg explained what was going on. There are hundreds of large (full body) picture windows and the women prostitutes stand in these windows dressed in bathing suits or in some cases (I'm told), not too dressed. The men go up to the windows and the women invited them to come inside, close the curtain and perform sexual acts. It is at this time that money is exchanged. This is now totally legal in this country. There are police everywhere making sure that the laws are protected. We walked the district, guarding our eyes and stopping to pray at various points. I saw shop after shop of live sex acts and other sexual activity. In between the sex shops were bars, restaurants and coffee shops. In some of the coffee shops, I believe those with the "C" and not the "K" on the outside, you an go in and buy marijuana or hash and smoke it there legally. We also saw a whole store which sold psychedelic mushrooms.
We ended the 'tour' at the Salvation Army where Frederick works. He is one of the men who has been working with Greg and Fire Holland. Frederick spends his days working with the men who want to come off drugs etc. and helps them make the transition OUT. We prayed for him right in front of the Salvation Army facility. Frederick shared that while he does get some good support from his boss and from a few of his coworkers for his radical message of preaching repentance, the 'higher-ups' in the SA have said that they don't want to pressure anyone to hear the gospel but to only speak to those who ASK to hear. Hmm… this sounds like another place I know. Frederick's response was, 'yea, about 1 in 1000 ASK to hear the message'.
