Following the Psalm 119 conference, Transplant Ministries and Lost Cause Ministries hosted the Five Hundred. The idea is to get 500 Christians onto the streets of the city on the same night. There were about 120 participants that went out to witness at four venues:
- Southlake Square
- Sundance Square
- Fort Worth Stock Yards
- Dallas West End
Byron, Tyler and I co-lead the group to the Dallas West End. Following a short briefing in Keller, we were supposed to meet in Dallas at 6:45. When we arrived at 6:20, there were already about 15 of our team members waiting for us. That was really encouraging that they were there and ready to go. Since many of them had not eaten dinner yet, we decided to brief the group, pray and get started a few minutes early. After prayer, some went to eat dinner and the rest started witnessing. More members of the group arrived for the next 20-30 minutes. We were also blessed to meet up with four guys who witness regularly in the West End.
We set up our main station at the corner of Corbin and Market. During the entire evening we always had someone stationed in this area. We had a box setup for open air preaching. A number of us preached from this area. At one point, an angry agnostic was questioning me while I preached. That heckling drew in a good sized crowd. Eventually, he went away frustrated. His question revolved around foolish things like what was the date that God created the earth. I pointed him to Acts 17 that the time of ignorance is passed.
Others in the group went to the DART station and some others went over to the Bodies exhibit. Ellen handed out her fist Gospel tract! That is awesome. Stepping out of her comfort zone. Our youngest son, Brendan, got up on the box and read two Gospel tracts. That was really cool to see him be excited to share the Gospel in the open air. LeeAnn was out on the streets for the first time. She spent a long time speaking with a woman who could not see very well LeeAnn did a great job speaking with her by reading a Gospel tract to her to since the woman was unable to read it. Way to go, LeeAnn!
At 9PM we meet back at our meeting point, shared our experiences and then prayed. This may be the start of a new West End outreach group. There were a number of people in the group that indicated an interest in coming back out at least once a month. We will be working on organizing these outreaches in the coming months. It was a pleasure to be part of this event. I look forward to additional 500 outreaches.
Once we had wrapped up, we realized there was a deep need right before us. We spoke with a man named Joseph, He was on dialysis and had just gotten out of jail. He needed to get back home to Arkansas to continue his dialysis. We were able to provide him food, water and a bus ticket. In so doing we provided him a stack of Gospel tracts and watched him hand them out at the bus station. While at the bus station we were able to witness to a number of people as well.
