A Neighborhood Story

This past year, the Lord has been working on our hearts, giving us a vision for reaching the lost He has placed all around us. It began with a conference in Sioux Falls last April featuring Ed Silvoso, who taught on marketplace evangelism. We called a plumber to do some work in our house not long after that conference, and his message was still very fresh in my spirit. When the plumber began work my thoughts immediately went to praying prayers of blessing over him.
As he worked I visited with him, learning he had come from Nicaragua, and that he had a wife and a young son with Downs Syndrome. I sought the Lord for direction on how to minister to this young man, and could see how troubled he was. The only thing I got was, "Ask him if you can pray for him." I thought that was just my mind, because I had been asking a lot of strangers that question.
The plumber left to get some parts, so I spent some time in serious prayer, seeking the Lord for a word or something. But I just kept getting the same thing, "Ask him if you can pray for him." When the job was done, and we were sitting at our kitchen table to handle payment, I said to the plumber, "I think God is telling me I'm supposed to ask you if I can pray for you. Is there anything I can pray for you about?"
He stopped what he was doing, started to cry, and said, "When I was out getting parts I told God I knew I didn't deserve to ask Him for anything, but I wanted Him to show me if there was any way I could ask you to pray for me." When I asked him what he needed from the Lord he just said, "I just want to get closer to Jesus. I've been away from Him for a long time." We prayed, and God touched him in a special way.
I asked him for his phone number, and he gave me a business card that had a picture of an inflatable gym on the back of it. I asked him about that, and he said he and his wife rented them out, and gave some of the profits to an orphanage in Nicaragua.
Some weeks later as I was praying in my living room, I looked out over my large back yard and in my spirit I could see several open air tents with tables underneath them, and a large inflatable gym and people everywhere. As I prayed about that, I felt the Lord wanted our family to throw a party for our neighborhood to bless our neighbors. The Lord also impressed upon me that we were to make up some nice invitation cards and take them around to all the neighbors...as we prayer-walked the neighborhood.
We shared this idea with our prayer group that meets in our home, and they all got behind it...giving offerings that covered the entire cost of food and rental of the inflatable gym. One friend even purchased all of the plates, napkins and plastic forks and spoons, etc. and gave them for us to use. Another couple stopped by just before the party and dropped off a couple of bags of popcorn.
We decided to keep the food items very simple...so the focus would be on the fellowship instead of on preparing and serving food. We served hot dogs, and another friend who owns the Little Caesar's stores in Sioux Falls donated a couple dozen pizzas and provided a warming oven to keep them hot and fresh. My wife Sue & I also baked several dozen cookies.
The Lord provided a picture perfect day. We set up the tents and the inflatable gym at about 4 in the afternoon. We also borrowed some games from Christian Center Elementary that the school uses for an annual winter carnival--(the most popular seemed to be the toilet paper toss, which had people lobbing rolls of toilet paper half-way across the yard trying to land them inside a toilet bowl lid!) The people started coming shortly after 5pm. By the time the evening was over, approximately 150 of our neighbors had come to our home. We were so blessed!!! I've attached some pictures of that evening.
We had set out a rule to everyone that was helping us that there wasn't to be any "preaching". We believed the Lord put this in our hearts to begin the process Jesus laid out in Luke 10...to go and speak peace and blessing to our neighbors, and to look for opportunities to minister to them as we did. That's already beginning to happen!
In fact, the first person to stop at our party that evening was a neighbor from a couple of blocks away who stopped to apologize. She apologized for not being able to be there later because two of her daughters were ill...one of them was even in the hospital. It was a perfect "opening", so I asked her if we could pray for her. She welcomed that, so a group of us gathered around her and agreed with her for her daughters' healing. You could see that even though she was a bit bewildered by it, she greatly appreciated the compassion demonstrated in our prayers.
The Lord also gave our son Matt an idea that we believe is helping to keep the door open in our neighborhood. He suggested we check to see if anyone would be interested in reviving a Neighborhood Crime Watch group which had fizzled some years earlier. So, we invited a police officer who works with that program to come to our party. He was very excited for the opportunity, and called me back right away. The first words out of his mouth were, "God bless you for what you're doing!" I told him I was ready to receive that!
We set up a P.A. system and he spoke for about five minutes. He also had some coloring books, pencils and other items to give to the children. We set up a table with a sign-up sheet for those interested in neighborhood watch. Several signed up, so we set up an organizational meeting for a week and a half later.
That meant we had another "event"...so I "had" to make up more invitation cards to invite everyone to the Neighborhood Watch meeting...giving me another opportunity to prayer walk the neighborhood and speak peace and blessing over each household! God is so good! During the second Neighborhood watch meeting, some of our neighbors said we needed to do something to develop and maintain the relationships we had begun to build, so they suggested a Block Party…(another event, more invitations, more prayer walking!)
We held the party at the end of October. Our street was blocked off, several people pulled out their portable fire pits, we all chipped in and brought treats, and had a great time. It was a “party” in every sense of the word…alcohol, etc. But the interesting thing is how the Lord allowed us opportunities to visit one on one with various neighbors. Before the night was over we had a car pool with another family, whose daughter’s schedule closely matched the schedule of our daughter.
To top it off, the woman we are now carpooling with ended up in the hospital with a serious ailment the following week. This allowed my wife the opportunity to take some flowers up to visit her, and she was given the opportunity to pray with her. Sue shared with her the reasons we decided to have the backyard party, the neighborhood watch group, the block party and even the carpool arrangement—to open doors of relationship so we could demonstrate and declare the Gospel of Jesus Christ to our neighbors. Sue had the privilege of praying with her, and telling her that, “the Kingdom of God has come near to you!”
It has been fun and exciting to see the Lord at work in our neighborhood…and we eagerly anticipate His next move!

God’s Peace and Blessings to you!

Tom & Sue Rooney