Shalom!

During our Miami outreach we (Alan Butterworth, Steve Cohen, Marilyn Smith, and Jerry Lucas, along with others who joined us from time to time) handed out nearly 4,500 Gospel tracts. We had dozens of conversations with Jews and Gentiles who did not know that Messiah has come, or had lost contact with their church and their faith. Many people have initiated ongoing dialogs with Alan Butterworth, the local Apple of His Eye contact in South Florida, and more may develop as time goes by.

We assisted Pastor Mark Wessling of Faith Lutheran Church in Hialeah to re-initiate their door-to-door efforts in the neighborhood around the church by inviting the neighborhood to Holy Week services. At lunch the Lord arranged that we meet two Spanish speaking Sephardic Jewish men who were very helpful with our lunch orders and who will continue in dialog about the Messiah. We spent some time at Florida International University where Alan Butterworth, a lawyer before he started work as a full time missionary, started a dialog that will be continuing with a Jewish law student there. It seemed like the Lord was affirming what we were doing, because there were several witness opportunities with Jewish people who were open to talking about the Gospel that happened when we were not in “official” outreach mode during the week.

We visited the outdoor Holocaust museum at South Beach and spent the evenings on the street with restaurants a couple of blocks from the beach there handing out tracts and talking to people until the Coconut Grove Art Festival opened. At the Coconut Grove Art Festival we continued to hand out fliers and to engage in dialog when the Lord opened that door. Once when I was talking to a vendor at the festival who had asked who we were and how we were different from the Jews for Jesus people who were also there, one of the Jews for Jesus came up and hugged me and thanked me for being there. The main differences are that we are a recognized Service Organization of the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, We are made up of both Jews and Gentiles, We “target” both Jews and Gentiles, and that we engage in dialog when possible instead of concentrating mainly on handing out tracts (I was amazed at how many we did hand out).

We attended services at Bet Hesed Messianic Congregation Friday night and at the local LCMS congregation that that both Alan Butterworth and Steve Cohen had been members of, Gloria Dei on Sunday. The pastor Darrell Stuehrenberg was very courteous, and two of the parishioners, Michael and JoAnne (a Jewish couple) joined us on Monday for our last day of outreach.

Pray that the Lord will use the tracts and the conversations to allow people to question their doubt and seek the answer in the scriptures and in dialog with the witnesses that God will put in their path.

To find more information, go to http://aohe-dc.org.

Jerry Lucas

Apple of His Eye Mission Advocate, Washington DC

703-582-1198

lucasjs@verizon.net

http://aohe-dc.org

http://sedablaze.org