South Wales Mission
Following on from the success of last year’s mission OAC again decided to hold a South Wales Mission this year. Evangelists from all over the country descended on Cardiff as our base for a week of evangelism on the streets of Cardiff, Bridgend and Pontypridd.
Our South Wales based Evangelists hold monthly open airs in each of these areas but the South Wales Mission was an opportunity for a concentrated week of street evangelism. The larger teams also meant that there was more opportunity to use some of our other methods of street evangelism like escapology.
The 2023 Mission
As is often the case in South Wales the weather cannot be depended upon to always be nice. Throughout the week we went from times of sheltering from the rain to basking in glorious sunshine. The changeable weather though did not dampen the evangelism with many great gospel conversations happening even in the rain!
Even on days when the team felt that things hadn’t gone as well, we were still able to come back to New Life Church, where we were based, and fill a whole flipchart sheet of paper with the names of those that we’d spoken to.
Memorable Moments
Every day was a great day for evangelism but there were certainly some memorable moments throughout the week.
On the Wednesday the team were in Pontypridd and due to the very wet weather had to set up with an improvised true or false board in a small underpass leading from the car park to the main shopping street. All of the team admitted afterwards that they were dubious that this would work but so many people were stopping to have conversations that at one point the decision had to be made not to try to stop anyone else because we were blocking the entire width of the underpass!
On Thursday in Bridgend our National Director, Steve Harris, was doing some escapology for the second time during the mission and unfortunately the gentleman he’d chosen to check the equipment was so strong that he actually broke the handcuffs! Fortunately, a quick repair job was possible and a huge crowd gathered to hear the gospel proclaimed.
On the final day of the mission there was a lot of drizzle but the team felt to go ahead. Unfortunately, as one of our London Evangelists, Steve Gurnett, painted up the drizzle kept getting heavier. Despite the poor weather a large crowd gathered and Steve was able to continue. He even performed a rather risky illusion with a wine glass which he’d never before attempted in the rain. Following this, one of our Evangelists turned to speak to a lady who immediately recognised him from coming to her school many years before and was extremely excited to be speaking to him again!
Prayer
Please pray for all of those we spoke to, but especially:
- The lady who recognised one of our Evangelists from visiting her school. She described herself as being from a religious family but had never read the Bible. She took a gospel of John and committed to read it over the coming weeks.
- A man who had some slight previous experience of church but had not trusted in Jesus. He has agreed to meet with one of our Evangelists over the coming weeks to explore more about the Gospel.
- A lady who was just visiting Cardiff for her birthday and spoke with us. She previously thought that the Christian message was all about being good enough to be saved.
- A man who was recently out of prison after being convicted of murder. He had not trusted Jesus but he believed in God and thought that forgiveness was possible.
If you would like to join one of our short term missions please check out the page on our website to find out how to register.
