When we arrived at Byron Bay, we had 2 weeks without any preset scheduled ministry. So, our team spent a day in prayer seeking the Lord about what He wanted us to do. As we asked our Father to speak to us and reveal how we could best show the love of Jesus to this hippie surfer culture, He began to put some new ideas on our hearts. Thus, our unique ministry of story portraits was born. This ministry involves teaming up and approaching strangers sitting on the beach or in the park or hanging out on the streets and asking if they would share their life stories. We were to listen, ask questions, and take their picture. Often this encounter alone will lead to them asking us the same questions and we have the opportunity to share about our mission of sharing the love of God or sometimes we even get to pray over our new acquaintance at the end of our conversation. We take their photograph and get their email address. Then we regroup and spend time praying/interceding for the person. We ask God to speak to us again and show us how He made them and what He wants to speak to them. The Lord is always faithful to give us words and pictures/visions to share (I love listening to God, it is always a step of faith). Next we write out the life stories in a creative fashion and include the photograph in an article format. We incorporate the words from God and explain in the end that we prayed over them and share the encouragements that Jesus spoke to us for them. We then email the final product back to them. It is awesome to spend so much time showing one person that they are beautiful, valuable, uniquely created, and loved by God. We have received extremely positive responses from those who have received their story portraits from us.
You can join us in praying for the salvation of the ones we have spoken with, their names are Ben, Sophia, Alvaro, Omra, Tree, Allison, Max, Aaron, Karen, Claire, Bernhard, Elliott, Felix, Viktor, and Anton.
Now we are starting the Impact Summer ministry joining with 4 other YWAM teams in an evangelism camp. Every day we hold big events on the beach (like volleyball tournaments, free pancakes and chai or BBQ, Sha Bang a Bang (youth all-nighter on New Years Eve), etc) and invite the public so we get to meet people and share Jesus with them. Please pray for our ministry in these next 2 weeks. I am expecting to see many salvations as the Kingdom of God invades Byron Bay through us!
