The word ‘gullible’ isn’t in the dictionary. CLICK HERE and see for yourself.

I wouldn’t take snowboarding lessons from him…
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I started out with nothing and I still have most of it.

On Saturday, January 14th, our High School ministry sponsored the Servant Evangelism outreach (on a blistering cold day!). Our goal was to politely approach strangers in the parking lot at the Georgesville Wal-Mart after they unloaded their shopping carts and offer to return their cart to the cart corral for them. We divided into two team, Grocery and Merchandise. We had some floaters from each team to get the middle.

When we positioned ourselves at both ends of the stores, we noticed that Wal-Mart had their entire staff of cart runners on duty. They literally had 3 people patrolling the parking lot every 5-10 minutes to return carts. I started to get a sick feeling because I thought that we picked the wrong Wal-Mart (there’s another one on the other side of Grove City). Near the beginning of our morning, Chris Parker talked to the Wal-Mart staff about what we were doing. They were open to us helping, and didn’t come out to return carts as much. One of the goals of this outreach is show God’s love to the Wal-Mart employees too, and I have no doubt that we did.

The Wal-Mart customers had varying responses to our offer to return their cart:
– Thankfulness
– Smiles
– Confusion
– Neutrality
– Rejection (I only know of one)

For the most part, thankfulness and smiles were the top two responses. I found that after I said it was to show God’s love, they would then give me a very confused look or say, “Ooooh-Kay…” or “Oh!” or “God Bless” or something else. I like it when the person gets speechless because you know that if they can’t find the words to express their feelings, then they’re truly touched.

I have an interesting story about one of the Wal-Mart customers. This middle-aged woman (who had a slight wobble in her walk) came up to me and asked if I could help her lift a 30-pound bag of dog food out of her cart and into her mini-van. I was ecstatic! I followed her to her car and told her why we were out here. She was telling me that she’s 40 years old and she never thought that was old when she was my age. The talked about how she had 4 surgeries since June 2005 and was really feeling broken. She very brief poured heart out and I could tell that she really appreciated an act of kindness from a stranger.

After chatting for a couple minutes and I said goodbye to her. About a minute later she pulled around in her mini-van and asked us, “Which church did you say you go to?” I told her which one, and she knew where it was. Brandi glanced over at the lady and recognized her voice and her face. Brandi Shader (team member) and the lady conversed for about 10 seconds and they realized that they knew each other from YEARS ago. The lady and Brandi’s mom were friends/neighbors from along ago and Brandi remembered her from her childhood. You never know what will happen when you go out evangelizing!

Those who came out:
Rachel Mori, Brittany Timmons, Grace DerMott, Brandi Shrader, Tony Taylor, Chris Parker, Mark & JeanMarie + Family. Hey guys, feel free to leave your experiences from that day in the comments section!

Oh! I almost forgot! Chris Parker wrote a song about serving others while we were out there Saturday morning.

Shaggin’ Carts for Jesus

Well…
We’re shaggin’ carts for Jesus
In the Wal-Mart parking lot.
Our faces are nearly covered
With layers of frozen snot.
Our fingers are nearly frozen
Our toes are nearly dead.
But we’re out here loving people
Just like Jesus did.

I thought these were really cool sculptures of Jesus on the shoreline.