This week before Easter there is no question that I am struck profoundly with the price that God paid through the beatings, nail pierced hands, and ultimately His death on the cross. His Son, Jesus died so that He might pay the penalty for our sins. His sacrifice and suffering were our free gift of salvation and everlasting life. We rejoice in the fact that the empty cross is evidence that Jesus paid it all and then rose from the dead and is now at the right hand of the Father. It seems too good to be true, like a dream. It is however a reality that we are all sinners and that the one way we can be forgiven and have eternal life is to confess that we have sinned and ask Jesus Christ to save us from our sins. It is with great joy that I share That our Kids camp last week in the hood had 6 children pray to receive Christ as their Lord and Savior. It was great have the youth from Second Baptist in Houston come and serve our city. It is wonderful as well that because of our neighbors concern for my health, they will be joining us for worship this Easter Sunday. God works in wonderful and mysterious ways. But amongst all these great blessings there is a burden that is growing in my heart for those who still find themselves homeless and without hope in these turbulent times. Recently, one of our staff members from BridgeBuilders went to a conference on homelessness here in the city where they have you spend the weekend in a controlled and supervised environment among the homeless. You live as though you too are homeless for two days with other homeless people. Our staff member was overwhelmed by the need and met a young man named Roosevelt and began to listen to his story. At the age of 11 his mother left him and his father and said she didn’t want to be his mother anymore. By age 16 his father abandoned him as well. He lived in the house until it was foreclosed and then would stay with friends each day until they found out he was homeless. He started making wrong choices and selling drugs to survive. He had no parents, no place to live, and no income. Ultimately by age 20 he would find himself sleeping on a mat in a homeless shelter. He determined to finish his H.S. degree without his parents or a place to stay and he did. Our staff member heard him describe how he turned to God in his time of need and cried out to God to help him and meet him at his point of need. To his amazement he met Joni, our director of employment. She told him that she wanted to take him out of the shelter, give him a new family (the BridgeBuilder’s family), and find him a job. She and a friend rented him a hotel room and we are now finding him a place to live. It’s just like the love of God to send Jesus to Earth to walk among us although He was sunless and God Incarnate to deliver us from our sin and eternal separation from God. Joni was not homeless, but she is a child of God sent among the least to set them free and give them a brand new way of life. How I pray for Christian employers to be awakened to the life changing impact their jobs can be to people in our ministry. I am prayerful that we would leave the edges of our fields so that young men, like Roosevelt, might find a job and sense of worth, which he has been lacking for a long time. The phrase that hit me the most when Joni was sharing Roosevelt’s story with me was that, he felt like at any moment he was going to wake up from his dream and realize he was back on his mat on the floor of the homeless shelter. He is so overwhelmed that he is loved unconditionally and has a new family in Christ and a future and hope in Jesus. We should all rejoice this week that we who know Christ are living a dream compared to those who don’t know Him. You and I know there are light and momentary afflictions in this world, but they are nothing compared to the hope of glory that we have in Christ Jesus. We are so blessed. I hope we will never forget where God found us so that we will reach out to those who are still living in hopelessness and are lost. Please join me in making the dream of God’s people a reality one life at a time. If you would like information regarding being a mentor or become a BridgeBuilders 300 ($100/month to support the ministry), please contact Mary Anderwald at manderwald@hisbb.org or 972-715-8401. Medically, I still feel great thanks to your fervent prayers and the mercy of God. He is so good to us. He is our everything and more than enough. We had the joy of praying for multiple families this past week as we visited others in the hospital between my lab work and my latest CT scan. We will get results later this week and will post them on Good Friday! He is good all the time!