Last Friday night a very select few of us braved the very cold weather to do our normal Friday evening outreach in Woking Town centre. Boy was it cold! I wore a thermal vest, a t-shirt and four jumpers (that’s right four!). We met to pray at the Y-Pod at 9:30pm as normal not really knowing what the evening would hold, or whether it would be worth it with so few of us. We decided to pray, then make a decision about what to do as Woking seemed very quiet.
Having prayed, the three of us felt that it was worth going ahead and we decided to travel light with so few hands at the pump, as it were. We left the flag and tables in the Y-Pod and just took what the three of us could carry, a single thermos of hot water, tea & coffee, sweets and tracts/gospels, which all ended up laid out on the edge of one of the flower bed thingys (don’t know what they’re called) under the station shelter.
We thought that there would probably be nobody around given the cold weather but to our surprise there were two of our “regular customers” who had come out early and were waiting to see us when we got there. We greeted them with a hot drink and went straight into conversation.
One Portuguese man, Alcino, had come the previous week with a bad back, so bad that he had been in hospital three times and had been in terrible pain that no medication had really helped with. We prayed for him and he was completely healed. When we saw him last night, he was still in complete health, but was off work due to the weather! The long and short of it is that he said that he is really keen to take things further with God, and that he wants to attend our Monday evening Bible study. He even said that he will try to persuade his girlfriend to come! Praise the Lord!
We also spoke to several young people who were hanging around under the shelter whom we were able to share our faith, why we were there and gave them some leaflets, which they gratefully received. At one point we must have had about 10 people huddled around our single thermos flask perched on the edge of the plant thingy!
Finally, two wonderfully kind young men brought a Yorkshireman called Tim to us who is tragically sleeping rough at the moment, having had problems accessing Woking Winterwatch. He is sleeping in a disused freezer!
He has a faith so we were able to encourage him and pray for him, which he appreciated, and Andy went to see where he sleeps. Hopefully we can keep in touch with him and help him in the weeks to come.
One thing that was really brought home to me was that while the table and the banner and all the other “kit” we use on Fridays is really useful, what God really wants is us, willing servants, and that there is literally no limit to what God can do if we put ourselves in His hands. I really didn’t think it would be worth staying around and that there would be hardly anybody for us to speak to but in reality we were literally rushed off our feet the whole evening.
Thank you Lord for such a wonderful evening!
Please remember to pray for Alcino, for Graham who we see every week and for Tim who is sleeping rough.
Cheers
Andrew
