"awesome-sauce"

Approaching a woman early today as she was playing with 4 young children in her driveway, we introduced ourselves, the purpose of our visit and commented about the beauty of seeing her in the yard with these four joy-filled children, all strutting around merrily on their tricycles. She smiled warmly, thanked us and then asked, “why do they make you do this”? Not quite fully understanding the nature of her question I asked her to explain to which she said, “why does the church make you do this, go door-to-door?”. We explained that we choose to do what we are doing because we believe in prayer and that regardless of whether people are believers in God or otherwise, the vast majority of them always welcome prayer on their behalf. We continued by saying that Christ calls us to “Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15), and that this journey has been extremely rewarding. She then offered some information about herself and her family and asked if we would pray for them, as she extended her hand and thank us for what we are doing. As we started to depart, one of the children, a girl perhaps no older than 4, called us to us and said, “be careful on the road so you don’t get hit”; we smiled, thanked her and promised we would stay close to the side of the road, which met her absolute approval.

Throughout the day during our encounters, we had a number of discussions with people who were truly in need and want of prayer, brothers and sisters we’d never before met, yet now stood with them as they shared some aspects of their lives with us. Smiles and handshakes of gratitude punctuated the day as people were struck that individuals were coming to their doors not asking for anything, not hoping for anything, nor trying to gain anything, but were simply coming to offer them something intangible, yet more valuable that most things we will ever own, that being the gifts of prayer offered with genuine love. As the day was drawing to a close, we visited a home and were greeted on the front porch by a young woman, the proud owner of this house “with a definite horse theme”, she explained, because they own horses. While introducing ourselves and the nature of our visit, she quickly exclaimed “awesome-sauce”. I grinned, stopped dead in my tracks and said “awesome-sauce?” to which she said again, “yep, awesome-sauce”, all the while with a HUGE smile. She was absolutely thrilled to have us standing on her porch, thanking us repeatedly for what we were doing and smiled in such a manner that you could literally feel her heart encompassing the two of us.

As we walked away, I asked Team member Brenda to explain the term “awesome-sauce”, which thrilled me when I realized that it is a term used to describe “better than awesome”. A quick internet search confirmed such, and reflecting back upon this visit, there is no doubt that our encounter with her was absolute awesome-sauce for us as well. And truly, this is the very reason that Christ calls ALL of us to “Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15), because not only are they in need of unconditional love and genuine hope, but so too are we, and when we give ourselves completely to Him, God ensures that we have what we need, when we need it.    

As of today, our Apostolate has now visited 2,403 homes in Charlton, and has processed 1,166 Prayer Requests. Praise God!