Ketchup!

Yes, it’s true. We saw the largest ketchup bottle in the world in Collinsville, Illinois. We arrived in St. Louis, just outside of Collinsville, on Thursday night. We had some time to go see the famous arch and take a quick tour of the museum beneath it.

Later that night we went to Pastor Tim Stark’s church (who is a former MC director) to have dinner. There we had an unexpected encounter! Tim runs a juvenile intervention program called Diversion designed for youth who get caught in illegal acts to have a way to divert the effects of a ticket or a fine. They serve the church and the community and take some classes. Thursday night is usually Diversion night, but it was cancelled because Master’s Commission was going to be there. However, there were about six young men who didn’t realize this and showed up anyway! It was awesome how God set this up! Tim had them each share their stories about how they got into the program, and the MC students as well as a couple of interns had the opportunity to share their testimonies with the boys. We could tell right away that God was at work in their hearts. These boys come from a lot of different religious and family backgrounds, and most are not Christians even though they might know about the Lord. We could see their hearts softening as we spoke what God put on our hearts and shared our stories. When we were finished, we asked if we could pray for them, and they each told us something specifically they wanted to ask God for. One young man wanted prayer for his friend who was in a car accident and in the hospital, and it was apparent that he was really touched by our prayer for him. Before they left, some of them gave us hugs and they all expressed gratefulness to us. There was a such a connection between us and what we were realizing was that we all have struggles and we all do “bad” things, but we are in this together, and God wanted to show these boys that He wanted relationship with them.

We arrived in Newport, Kentucky, near Kristen’s home, last night, Friday. A few days earlier Laura had a word of knowledge that God wanted to release the miraculous, and she sensed that there was a young man or boy that had a broken leg or foot. When we arrived at Lifegate Church last night, a young boy named Ryan came in with a foot brace on. We prayed for him and he said there was a lot of improvement!

Pastor Dwight also had a prophetic word for Kristen’s brother, Nick, and his girlfriend, Ashley, about the threefold cord that cannot be easily broken. We felt led to look up Ashley’s name and it means “harmony,” which totally goes along with this word. We are so excited about everything else God wants to do here. God is helping us to come together as a team and break through the “membranes” that hold us back from becoming all we were meant to be.