NEW YORK CITY OUTREACH

I just want to give everyone a shout of thanks for the prayers in regards to my New York City mission trip. It was an absolute incredible time! I hooked up with some forty urban/street missionaries from around the United States we took a bite out of the big apple! There were so many people that were witnessed to and prayed with. Sometimes its hard to put words together to share the absolute blessing this was.


We witnessed at Ground Zero, on the Subway, Time Square and Thompson Park. Plus anywhere else we were walking. We actually went to Times Square three times in the evenings. This was an incredible place. There were literally hundreds of thousands of people that walk and site see down this street. We ministered to every imaginable race and creed; from every religion to paganism to atheists, really, you name it and they’re in New York.

I met many Catholics. This was hard ground to minister too because so many trust in their own works and do not want to listen to what the Bible says. I actually had my first opportunity to share the Gospel with on two different occasions with Jewish men. They also were resistant to the Gospel. I believe I was able to sow a little seed in the second conversation I had with one he seemed a little more open as I shared with him the prophecies full filled about Jesus.

I also spoke with many people into New Age and Paganism, this mostly lead to arguing and debates so I tried to end the conversation quickly when that started.

I met many people who claimed to believe in God but had no real relationship with Him.

Many people claim they "believe in God" or say they are "Baptist" or "Methodist" or when I ask them how they came to know Christ they would say "all my life." When I’d probe a little deeper they would usually want to end the conversation quickly. I would stress to them that God wants to know them personally and that just knowing about God don’t save a person. You must be born again!

I did meet many people who were open to receive Christ. I was able to pray with a little Korean woman who would occasionally drink at the clubs with her friends. She was open to repent and cried out to Jesus. Tears were streaming down her face as she asked God to forgive her and give her ability to resist the temptation to drink when she is lonely. Amen! This was awesome!

On another occasion a young man and his girl friend came upon me at Times Square. While I was ministering to the guy, some of the other gals on the Raven team were ministering to the girl. Both the guy and the girl ended up repenting and making Jesus Lord of their lives. It was so cool when the two came together and each shared what happened. –It was incredible!

Another highlight that only God could orchestrate was we met a man that was a Chaplain of a local mission. We met him at Thompson Park. Thompson Park is where we made up sandwiches and went in and fed and prayed with the homeless and anyone else in need.

This Chaplain hung out with us and he enjoyed our company and the zeal we all had to minister to the lost. It was great having the opportunity to sow into him, he was eating it all up and loved the fellowship with us.

He asked if we could go back with him to the mission, as he needed to do roll call for the evening. As we were waiting outside we had the opportunity to minister to many guys who were inside the fenced yard or walking by us on the street. The Chaplain then came out of the building and said he got permission for us to go in and minister to some of the guys if we wanted and of course we did! It was an incredible time Pastor Alex Hill from Florida preached and exhorted the men to look to Jesus!! We then were able to lay hands on guys and pray for them. It was awesome! Guys were coming up for healing & deliverance. Many were weeping and crying out to God—It turned into a Holy Ghost Revival Praise God!! One little Asian man walked up to me and I asked him what he wanted God to do in his life and without batting an eye the little man said "I am a sinner and I need God to forgive me of my sins".--- Wow! Praise God! I asked him a few questions to see that he understood who Jesus was. I then led this little Korean man in prayer crying out to Jesus for forgiveness of his sins!! –Totally incredible! –It was an incredible time!

There are so many more to share I don’t have time nor the typing skills to perform this.. lol.. lol..

Thanks so much for all of your prayers!

God Bless!
Steve Ignowski

New York City Outreach Coming Up..please pray.

Greetings Brothers and Sister in Christ!

This Thursday May 22nd I leave for a 5 day mission trip to New York City. New York City is America's largest city. With an estimated 12,000,000 residents located within its boundaries, it is a tremendous harvest field of souls. While the city is diverse economically, socially, culturally, and racially- we have found that the answer to life's problem remains constant: Jesus Christ.

I’m excited to be joining efforts with RAVEN Ministries. The outreach, termed "Boot Camp in the Big Apple" by its organizers, will be composed of men and women from across the nation who will spend five days doing street witnessing, open-air preaching, music and other types of evangelism in some of New York Cities most famed locations.

I was blessed to be part of this outreach in 06’ and I am really anticipating an awesome time this year!

I covet your prayers for this mission trip. Please pray. Prayer is essential for an outreach to be productive and successful. I desire to see many people come to Jesus. Thanks so much!!

Please pray for:

-Safety for Jodi and our 2 dog's (Andy & Adam) while I'm gone.

- God's divine protection for a safe plane trip to and from New York. Also, for safety and protection on the streets, subway, parks everywhere we walk and minister.

-The Gospel to be presented clearly and for receptive hearts. We know that some plant, some water and some reap a harvest. I pray for all three and for most of all that JESUS to be exalted!!

- God's divine appointments for those to minister to. You know, those "God set-ups"

- Anointing & Gifts to flow from the Holy Spirit.

Thanks so much!

Also, recently I "finally" put my testimony on audio. I mixed it with some music and posted it on one of my myspace pages, if you would like to listen here’s the link: (left click on it)
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=165311905&blogID=386076864

Here's the video I made from 06’ New York trip here’s that link:



Thanks again for your prayers! God bless!
Steve Ignowski

STREET MINISTRY UPDATE

With the warmer weather finally upon us a small team of us hit the streets of Elkhart to minister Jesus!!

Bill Lehman, Justin Reeves and I went out sharing Jesus to whosoever God would lead us to. It was a great night! Really, it turned out to be a busy night even with the threat of rain and thunderstorms there were still many people out and about.

We ministered to many people this night. Two different homeless guys, a Hispanic couple who had some real pagan beliefs, we talked with 2 guys who were carrying a case a beer home. We bumped into these guys as we were all waiting for the light to change as to cross the street. Sometimes God just sets these appointments up, as this was quite the encounter. They seemed pretty quite as we shared with them that Jesus is better than drunken stupor. Justin did a good job sharing with these men.

We also met a Grandma lady with her 3 small children. Bill Lehman ministered to them and really planted some good Gospel seed. We bumped into a young couple who were atheists and seemed uncomfortable listening to us but the word and testimony of Jesus was spoken to them. They even tried to get away from us quickly but their dog they were walking broke loose from the guys grip and ran straight back to us.—The pooch wanted to hear a little more of the Gospel!!-Amen!

The enemy is sure at work in this area and doesn’t want us out there ministering the Gospel. One incident we had ie were just walking down the street and a car drove by and some demonized guy stuck his head out the window and started screaming vulgar profanities at us. But we prayed for the guy and kept on our Gospel way!!—Praise God!! It was a great first night of street ministry!!

~Steve

MINISTRY UPDATE: MAY 01-08

A small team of us went back into the county jail Monday evening to minister Jesus. We went into our usual 2 cell blocks A & C.

When we first entered I visited briefly we a lot of guys who wanted Bibles and of course I handed them some Chick tracts. I love passing out those Chick tracts, they definitely are an awesome tract the guys always ask me more different ones. I guess it’s the comic book part of it they like. Whatever it is they are good seed.

I then sat down in cell with a man who I had the privilege to pray with to receive Jesus as His Lord and Savior, after we embraced and greeted each other we got right into the Word and started sharing and having a good Bible Study time. You see, a lot of what we do in these cell blocks is discipleship and mentoring. Yes, we evangelize but we follow up with these guys and disciple them. The reason I bring this up is to stress an important point and that is that new believers need to be cared for. It would be easy for me to just from cell block to cell block and just minister evangelistically and pray with guys to receive Jesus. But I believe without discipleship and mentoring the enemy, the devil, will draw these guys back to sin, destruction, and a life away from Jesus. We see it happen all the time. The parable of sower talks about only receiving the word for a short time due to not having any root. (Mark 4: 15-17). We help these guys get some “spiritual roots”.


The man I was talking to gets out in a couple of weeks. We’ve made plan to hook up and come to my local Church. One the issues he is struggling with and we talked a lot a bout it is the fact that he is living with a woman who is not his wife. I’m not going to type in here our whole discourse, but be assured that I shared with him exactly what the Bible says about living like this, its called SIN and in fact God calls it fornication. It is sexual sin. When a believer chooses to disobey God and blatantly disobey God they actual are in a very dangerous spot, which can lead to totally walking away from God. Yes! This is serious and we talked intensely about this.

One of things I stressed with this man was that God will empower him to do what’s right. If God expects us to obey and live holy, which He dose, He will give us the ability to do it. – You see were not on our own. We don’t have to obey the Word of God on our own strength. In all reality we cannot anyway. We rely on the empowering strength of God within us. His grace is efficient! God grace empowers us to obey. We talked a lot about that.

I believe when he gets out he is going to do the right thing. I will be praying for him, please keep him lifted up in your prayers. His name is Spencer, He is nineteen and really desiring to follow God with all his heart.

After I prayed with Spencer and everyone else was done ministering we all went to Cell Block C. This cell block we also go into regularly and I have made some real friends here. One guy in particular named Jason. I always make it a point to look him up. He is a young guy around twenty-five with a real desire to serve God with all his heart. In fact he is developing into a real spiritual leader in this cell block.

One of the things he and I have been praying for is that his mom would come in and visit him, as it’s been months since she last came in. Well, guess what? Last week she came in and visited him. He was overjoyed! Man, I was overjoyed.

We talked and got into the Word another brother joined us and we had a great time studying God’s Word.

======BIG NEED:
Some of the inmates having trouble reading small print are asking for large print Bibles. I plan on getting some of these. Also there is a major need for Spanish Bibles and tracts. And some of the guys that are real serious with their walk with Christ are asking for Concordances. I plan on getting some these as well.

If anyone would desire to help with this please message me or go the very bottom of the page is a paypal button for on line giving.

Thanks! ~Steve

====WHAT’S COMING UP:

With the warmer weather we will be going out to the streets on Friday evenings ministering Jesus to whoever God leads us too. We had an incredible time last year ministering on the streets of our city and now with the warmer weather upon us were pumped up to go out again! Please pray for us and for God to prepare the hearts of the people we talk to. We have a team of four to six of us who are going out in the boldness of the Holy Spirit! It’s an amazing thing seeing who God leads you to, because you never know. Last year we ran across atheists, gangs of youth, drunks, homeless people, families walking in the park, police officers, you name it. It’s going to be awesome!!

Also, May 22-26 I will be going on an inner city mission trip to New York City. This will be my second time ministering on the streets in New York as I went in 06’. I’ll be going with RAVEN Ministries for this awesome evangelistic outreach. We’ll be witnessing Jesus at the Statue of Liberty, Ground Zero, Jamaica Queens, Empire State Building and Times Square.

God Bless! and thanks for the prayers!
Steve