Stories from previous year's events

A very cool story from 2005...

On Sunday June 12 The Meeting Place church was set up at Jubilee Park with Streethope ministries in the morning serving breakfast. As we were setting things up a fellow by the name of Dan rode up to us on a bike and asked directions to a church in the area (he's only been here a couple of weeks from Ontario). We told him about Global Harvest church just around the corner and invited him to stay and have breakfast. He said that would be great. After breakfast two volunteers named Cheryl and Earl went to Global Harvest with Dan. As Cheryl sat down she noticed that Dan was there sitting in another area of the church. As she sat there the Lord gave her a strong impression to pray,pray,pray that there was a battle on for Dan's soul. She thought "what's this?, but o.k." So she proceeded to do so. During the worship music part of the service, Pastor Mike Bullet suddenly got up and interrupted the service, stopped the music and told everyone to sit down, adding that he doesn't usually do something like that. He said there was a call on someone to be saved and for them to come forward, and so Dan gets up and accepts the Lord!

Three different people in three different areas of the church were
directed by God at the same time and they all responded with obedience. Praise God!

Dan later said to us that as he came in and sat down something came over him that he could not describe and as Mike spoke it was as if someone pushed him out of his chair to respond. He has since stated that his desire to use drugs is completely gone and he is feeling great. A couple of people who know have asked what has happened to him, that there is a noticeable change in him. That's the power of Jesus.

The adventure of Jesus continued this past weekend. On Saturday Dan came over in the morning, as we were to go looking for some used furniture and go apartment hunting with him. By noon he had a full bedroom suite, couch with recliners, lamps, coffee tables ready to go. All that for $60. God Bless Manager John and the MCC. We had lined up 3 appointments to look at apartments. We prayed that the first one we would go to would be the one for him. And yes, God provided. It turned out be absolutely perfect for him. The landlady is a sweet woman who has already talked about hiring Dan to fix things around the house. She dropped the rent by $25/month simply because she felt to do it. She has given him a TV, phone, kitchen table and some chairs, as well as some kitchen stuff, pots&pans, etc. He was completely moved in by Sunday afternoon. It all came together so well that it would not have been even imaginable without God in control. In addition to this, there was an issue that he had already paid rent for July at the place he was living. After prayer he made the phone call. He is getting 1/2 month rent back as well as the full damage deposit. To say that Dan is stunned about all this would be putting it mildly! He gives all praise to God and wants to follow him whole-heartedly. Thank you Lord Jesus.

John
Abbotsford, BC

2004 events:

Love Sackville, NS

We had a great Love Sackville event again this year (2 nd time). We had 9 churches involved and a Christian school. About 200 people joined together for the prayer walk Friday night down the main street of our community, led by people carrying a large cross. On Saturday people in the community were once again overwhelmed by the kindness shown them as they received one thing after another. We had a car wash, interior car cleaning, garbage pick-up, hotdog, juice, cotton candy giveaways, face painting and a family fair. People from the various churches enjoyed working together. The weather was beautiful. We met at 3pm for celebration service and to tell stories of the day - how our lives and others were touched.

Kathy

Gateway Community Church

Love Airdrie (Alberta) has been so special to this city. For years our ministerial rarely met and have had little to do with each other. Love Airdrie and our Chautauqua Christian event have rekindled the interest in working together and we can definitely thank the lord for this. Recently we had a shooting in Airdrie (which never happens) when a step dad killed the son, tried to kill the girlfriend and then took his own life. The house was a disaster area to say the least. So the churches of Airdrie got together and raised $60,000 to renovate the place to help with the family's pain and suffering. The church of Airdrie is actively looking for opportunities to show God's love through acts of kindness and we thank you for the spark.

This year we added another church and ordered one hundred more shirts to raise our total in two years to almost 500 (a lot for our small town of 15,000!)

One story from this year's event is of a trucker that went to a car wash to wash his rig which usually costs 350 bucks and 3 hrs labor. Some Love Airdrie Christians intervened and washed his rig for free and it only took an hour! Just like last year we hit every area of the city with acts of kindness.

Patrick Green

Living Springs Church

Love North Shore (North Vancouver, BC)

Our project was wonderful! We ended up with a budget of about $650. We went to this co-op housing unit that has a lot of single Moms. (We've invested quite heavily in this unit over the years, so there was a welcome.) I bought a mobile basketball hoop to set up. I also bought $140 worth of apples oranges and honeydew melons. We collected a whole pile of good used clothing and brought that as well. Lynn brought pop and freezies and watermelon. My Mom brought strawberry shortcake. There were some good games, bubbles flying everywhere, side-walk chalk, face-painting. Lots and lots of people turned up. We had close to 40 from our church, and 3 from Sutherland. We served out 80 pieces of shortcake. We put the fruit in bags and went door to door giving it out and inviting people to the party. We had music playing from our P.A.

Some of the good stuff:
One of the men in the unit thanked us several times. He kept saying, "You've put smiles on the faces of these kids. And they don't smile very much." The last time he said this he was kneeling on the sidewalk in the pouring rain.
One woman who was being given a freezie remarked, "I haven't been loved in a very long time."
One of our volunteers was trying to give away watermelon. He approached a young mom, and she stuffed a bag full of watermelon and remarked, "We didn't have any food in the house; now we'll eat watermelon!" Our volunteer subsequently gave her a bag of hot dogs and buns as well.
There were several Iranian people who hung out through the whole party, and many first nations. This was a great joy to me, because I am particularly concerned for these two groups.
And the weather!: it threatened to rain when we first started, but the rain held off until 5:55, five minutes before we were scheduled to stop. One little girl said, "What time is it?" The answer came, "5:45". She said, "Oh no! The party's going to end! And we were having so much fun!"
In short this was the best thing my church has ever done locally.
Oh yeah, and on Sunday morning an Iranian family from the co-op visited our church service. It was their first time ever in a church!

Darryl

Vineyard Church

Our car wash/doughnut give-away was a big success!! I don't how many
cars we had, but at some points, our washers were struggling to keep
up! It started out very slowly, and a few of our people went up to
the mall parking lot with flyers to advertise the car wash (and
doughnuts as incentive). A few of us stood at the intersection with
big signs. After a while, people started taking us up on the free car
wash - they couldn't believe it was FREE. "What is it for?" they kept
asking. Pedestrians stopped in for doughnuts and pop and it was a
festive atmosphere. The weather was perfect, just as we prayed for
last night. We had 36 volunteers: 20 adults, 2 teens, 14 children.
Even our 3-year-olds washed cars!

Janet

Westlynn Baptist

Love Surrey, BC

Saturday, it was forecasted to rain, so we went prepared. We had 5 groups of 7-8 people passing out pop at the skytrain station, certain intersections, by save-on-foods, and at Bear Creek Park. They passed out their pop is less than an hour! And we had one group going door-to-door doing car washes. Later we did a short car wash at our church as well. And praise God, the rain did not come until we had finished everything and packed up.

We had 50 people from our church participating, plus 5 youth from nearby Fleetwood International Baptist, and 6 summer missionaries from the States.

Tim Chan

Surrey Chinese Baptist

Love Surrey team

Love Ridge-Meadows, BC

We had a blast for Love Ridge Meadows!

The High Way Church did a car wash/BBQ thing, like last year. They had a good number in spite of the rain, with many good exchanges with people.

Our church (Generations Christian Fellowship) had a team delivering 5 food hampers, a team went and totally cleaned a house, which turned into a larger project with other needs involving 3 churches, a team picked up trash down a busy street, a team did bathroom clean-up in the downtown business core, and another gave out cokes. So much fun!

One participant wrote:

We took advantage of this opportunity to love Ridge Meadows. We cleaned out the stock of popsicles and freezies in many of the city's major grocery stores, and then gave them to unsuspecting people in the Albion Ferry lineup and at the Pitt Meadows' Day celebration; no strings attached. With the popsicle or freezie came nothing but a smile - not even a church bulletin or invitation to an upcoming event! J We simply blessed people showing Christ's love through our actions. Though the purpose was to bless others, the youth that participated were equally blessed. All in all, a great day!

Love Abbotsford, BC

Well, I suppose it was bound to happen. We've had some amazing years, weather-wise - the first year the rain stopped for a couple of hours just so we could do our events, then it poured (like Sackville's first time too!) and we've had some really nice weather too, especially last year when we did an outdoor worship celebration for the first time with a couple thousand people after our days of events. But I knew that even if it did rain for Love Abby, it would still be powerful. And sure enough. this year we had quite a bit of rain during the day - enough to shut down most car washes and lawncutting projects, and we also had to move our worship celebration indoors - but it was still an awesome day of showing God's love to people, and celebrating His love together as one church!

Here's one story from a first-time participant:

My church was handing out teddy bears at our local hospital. I had no idea that God would literally rip my heart out of my comfort zone and re-build it with the desire and compassion for the lost. My smile faded quickly as my friend and I stepped into the pediatric ward. We went to this one room where this little boy of 7 years old was all hooked up to machines and had tubes coming out of his nose etc... I looked into his eyes and you see a deep sadness that really no words can explain it. We introduced ourselves and explained what we were doing. His mom said that she had no money to pay for the teddy bear and when we said it was free she was dumbfounded. We then asked her if we could pray for her son and she grabbed my arm pleading " YES YES YES PLEASE YES!!" This experience awoke me from my slumber of being a Christian. It gave me such a deep desire beyond any ache to show God's love to the lost.

Jesus changed me,

Kari

And there many other awesome things that took place that day, and we wrapped it up with a powerful celebrative time together worshipping our God - the author of Love!

Kevin

Abbotsford Vineyard Church

Love Cowichan (Vancouver Island, BC)

Friday night we had our "Love Cowichan" kick off evening - with about 500 people (of all ages) attending a worship celebration and commissioning in the city square. It was the most amazing experience - even surpassing our Marches for Jesus celebrations! There was a real anointing upon the worship, prayers and message such as I have never experienced before. I was asked to talk about why we are doing Love Cowichan - speaking about servant evangelism, and about the kindness of God that leads people to repent (Romans 2:4). That same kindness (God's kindness) is expressed through us - to the people of the Cowichan Valley.

For Saturday's "kindness explosion" we had an estimated 600-700 people involved in various projects in and around Duncan, wrapping up with a celebration back at the city square. It feels so right to be involved in a love your city event, and we look forward to great things from God not only here - but as we here of what God is doing in other places.

Bruce Stott and Glyn Easson

Duncan, BC

The Love Quesnel event was a great success again this year. There were 9 churches and over 200 people involved. We had a great time of worship and prayer on Friday night. One of the Pastors shared about the power of Christ's love displayed on the Cross. Our "kindness explosion" included two free carwashes, free pop, water, hotdogs, popcorn, cotton candy, facepainting and balloons. We also handed out carnations to the elderly in rest homes, mowed lawns, cleaned washrooms, washed windshields and picked up garbage! Yes and we were blessed with great weather too! The rain started at 2:00 pm, just as we finished cleaning up the last event!
Saturday night we had a celebration service and what a celebration it was! It was an emotional time sharing testimonies of God's power that we had seen throughout the day. I'll share the best one:

On Friday night, there was a family camping just outside of Quesnel on their way through the area looking for work. They had been on the road for some time with little money for food. In desperation, the mother cried out to God for help. The next morning while driving though Quesnel they came across the "Love Quesnel" free hotdog and pop stand along the side of the highway. The family had their fill of hotdogs and were able to take a couple dozen weiners and buns with them because we had so many (that's another story). While there, they asked if there was a Pastor they could talk to. Well as a matter of fact, one of the associate Pastors was there enjoying a hotdog! He had decided not to volunteer but wanted to come and check out what was going on. Well God brought that family and that Pastor to that hotdog stand for a reason. The Pastor took the family to the church to set them up with some money from the benevolent fund. He shared the gospel with them and the father, mother and both kids got saved! Praise the Lord!

I can't express how important it is for us to get out of our churches, get together with other believers and give LOVE!

Christa Porter
Love Quesnel

Love Winnipeg, MB

Love Portage (Portage la Prairie, MB)

This was the second year for Love Portage and God seems to be using this event to bring the churches of Portage together, and touch the lives of people of this city. It is strange that just before this year's event we started hearing stories from last year. One person who had received a kindness act last year had the "Love Portage Kindness Card" on their fridge for the whole year and often thanked God for His love whenever she saw it and she made sure her church was involved this year. There are lots of stories from this year too, but it is amazing how these intentional acts of kindness affect people in ways that we do not know.

This year there were 13 churches involved as this small city was invaded with about 350 people clad in white tees with all kinds of kindness acts - car washes, drink give-a-ways, free bar-b-ques, and one church had a whole street blocked off for a street party. It was great to even hear people say things while receiving an act of kindness like "I know! God loves me", others were just dumbfoundedly impacted. This awesome event has greater effects in this city than we will know. We are looking forward to next years Love Portage!

Bill Galston

Prairie Vineyard