Giving Your Heart

It has taken me most of the weekend to recover from Friday ;^) but it's a good kind of exhaustion.

As you know, Friday we had our Valentine's Midnight Outreach and we started bright and early, Friday morning.
I was at Sam's Club when the doors opened at 7 am to buy the 150+ roses for the outreach. Then, I met with a young mothers' play group at 9:30 to de-thorn and tag each one of the roses. We snipped thorns, tied on HPC cards, and curled ribbons for more than an hour.

I went home for a brief respite before I had to meet the rest of the team at a club we've never gone into before. This is probably the "biggest" club in the Baton Rouge area -- not in terms of square footage, but in terms of working girls and (sadly) patronage.
We have been trying to get in for several years, but all we have ever done before was leave the roses and chocolates at the door with the bouncers.

Well, on Friday afternoon, they actually let us come in to decorate the girls' dressing room! It was a pretty large room so we left balloons and roses and flower petals, chocolates and candy hearts and chocolate-dipped strawberries. And we wrote on the mirrors:

"HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY FROM HEALING PLACE CHURCH"

We also gave them a bunch of gifts -- earrings from the Mom's lifegroup & cute water bottles and makeup cases that were left over from our Live The Dream Women's Conference.

We met a couple of hours later to go decorate the dressing rooms of our other two "regular" clubs, then met again at 8 pm to go to the clubs and hand out roses to the ladies.
It's always so amazing to me how warmly they receive us -- the incredible favor that is granted us. And it seems that we always manage to touch someone's heart.

One young girl who was getting ready to work, asked us, "Who are you all? Why are you doing this?"
When we told her that we were the church and we just wanted her to know that she was loved and valued, she was visibly shocked. It was her 4th day on the job. Who knows the long-term impact of that encounter?

To me, this is what Valentine's Day should really be about: Giving your heart -- a heart for Christ -- to those who have never known His love. It's about showing them they are VALUABLE and worthy to be loved. It's not about preaching or shaming or acting "holier than thou..."

It's about being the hands and feet of Jesus.

It's just one small part of the Servolution.

Some of the gorgeous ladies who worked so hard to get the roses ready Friday morning!

Alliece and I at S.K.

Decorating at G.C.

Live the Dream!

Setting up at K's

Alliece checking the decor at K's
Look what was still hanging on the mirror at S.K.'s!!!!
Pastors Dino & DeLynn's Christmas card!

Just a small part of the MIDNIGHT "Dream Team:"
Me, Alliece, Jillian, & Donna (Charity is taking the photo)

Sweet MIDNIGHT

TOMORROW is going to be amazing!

We have our Valentine's Midnight Outreach tomorrow night (What is Midnight Outreach? Click HERE).
As usual, we will go and give roses to the ladies who are working the clubs & walking the streets -- just letting them know that they are loved and they are valued, right now, just the way they are. But since it is Valentine's weekend, we will also be decorating the dressing rooms, much like we did for the Christmas outreach.

But, even more exciting:
Tomorrow afternoon, we are being admitted to decorate the dressing rooms of a strip club we have never been allowed to enter before! How cool is that?? We won't be able to go in and give the roses during business hours like we do with the other clubs (not yet, anyway), but the club owners have finally relented and are allowing us to come before they open to surprise the girls with decorations and gifts and candy.

I have to be up at the crack of dawn to go and buy 200 roses and a couple hundred carnations on THE DAY BEFORE VALENTINE'S DAY!
Please let me be the first one there!

I am sooo loving the movements my church has started... the culmination of which will be

SERVOLUTION WEEK

in April. We already have more than 70 churches signed up to participate! Talk about making a huge difference. This experience is going to be like no other.
If you or your church are interested in being a part, just go HERE to watch the video, learn more, & sign up.
You do NOT want to miss this!

We are "Reaching the World by Serving One."

I love HPC!

Midnight On Bourbon Street

Where to begin?
Sleep deprivation and physical exhaustion are nothing compared to the whirlwind of thoughts and memories of last night...

Yesterday -- VALENTINE'S DAY -- was phenomenal.
Midnight Outreach -- where we show the love of Jesus to strippers and prostitutes and anyone who thinks they may be "forgotten," -- is always amazing, but last night was almost indescribable.

Our day started out in Baton Rouge where we visited some of our usual stops to give roses and chocolates to the ladies. But our "usual" route was diverted when we learned of a young woman who was in tremendous emotional pain. We drove to Scotlandville just to see her and let her know that SOMEONE does care. This woman is living in deplorable conditions with her two very young children. As my friend, Carole, said: "A 'CONDEMNED' rating would be a step up for her building." While we could not change her physical circumstances, Jesus showed up and changed her spiritual circumstances. Donna and Charity prayed with her & this morning she attended our "Ladies Thrive" weekly meeting. I can't wait to see how God moves in her life...

After visiting a couple of local strip clubs where we left boxes of chocolates and roses and balloons in the dressing rooms, we headed to New Orleans.
We partnered with a church there -- Church of the King -- and went to "train" them in the art of Midnight Ministry. I think Alliece said it best: What we are doing is taking the church to the streets. We are letting them know that someone does care; they are not forgotten.

And then we hit the streets of the Big Easy.
Talk about a field ripe for harvest!
Bourbon Street was surreal.
Surrounded by so many lights and music and smells, but also by so much pain and loneliness.
Our trepidation and hesitancy quickly disappeared when we realized that this was going to be a whole new ballgame: Here, there were no suspicious bouncers blocking our way. The only suspicion we encountered was from those who thought we were selling the roses... They couldn't believe they were FREE. It's not common to get something for nothing in this town...

Here, on Bourbon Street, the clubs WELCOMED us in! The ladies eagerly accepted our roses and chocolates and our supply of 300 roses was depleted in less than 20 minutes. So many of them told us how much they appreciated it -- how NO ONE had ever done anything like this before -- how glad they were we had come...

For some, it may have been the only "Valentine" they would receive.
For many, we may be the only Bible they ever read.
As one of our group quipped, last night we did a "Drive-By Jesus," and I can't think of a better way to spend this holiday of LOVE.

We arrived home around 2 AM -- exhausted, but ELATED -- by what God had done.

My pics were taken with my cell phone, so please forgive their quality. CAROLE has some MUCH better pictures from last night over at her blog; be sure to check them out!
For more about Midnight Outreach read here.

De-thorning the roses and tying each one with ribbons and cards...

Getting Ready to ROLL!

A picture of some of our group with one of the club owners!
She was SO nice and SO appreciative of what we were trying to do...
We definitely made a connection here!