In November of 2015 as part of my formation to the diaconate, we were trained in a way to answer Pope Francis’ call to go to the periphery and to preach the gospel. We were trained that day by the people from St. Paul Street Evangelization. Adam Janke did a wonderful job training us. At the end of the day, we had to go out and practice what we had learned. It was kind of scary, kind of like a 12 year old boy at his first middle school dance. But I got through it and it turned out to be quite rewarding. At the time, I thought this was something I wanted to do. My plan was to try and start a team after my ordination in 2019. At least that was my plan.
Fast forward to March of 2017 and I find myself asking my pastor if I can go ahead and start evangelizing the next Friday. He said,,yes. I ordered my starter kit from SPSE(St. Paul Street Evangelization).
I was going to start kind of easy on this as I had no team as yet. I committed to evangelizing each Friday at our Lenten fish fries which are always well attended and I prayed that God would start bringing me my team. The first two weeks were just me but they were absolutely wonderful. The very first man that came up to me, David, had just found out he had cancer. So, I immediately found a friend to pray with me. He left feeling much better. It was a parish event so I was pretty amazed at just how many non-Catholics and non-practicing Catholics were coming up to me. I prayed with many people and was able to give away many miraculous medals and rosaries. I knew this was the right thing to do and I have faith that God will bring me workers for his vineyard.
God is faithful.
We just finished our third week. Yes, I said, “We.” My youngest daughter and another spirit filled disciple, Jennie came and helped. God’s graces just kept pouring out as we had more visitors than one person could handle. Jennie was nervous, much like I was the first time. I told her that it is fine and that her love for Christ would make up for any nervousness she had. She did wonderfully and promised to come back and help the next week also.
Look’s like maybe I have a team now. I think the words above our evangelizers pretty much says it all.
