The Lord's Rain: Curfew Shall Not Ring Tonight!

Once again, a prompt from the Lord pans out! Did I ever doubt it?

Last week, I told you about the front-page story in Metro last week about The Lord's Rain's financial concerns. That was followed with a piece done by Breakfast Television on CityTV, which aired on Thursday.

I didn't see the TV story (and they don't post their stories online), but as for the newspaper item, I do believe the Lord had His hand on Kate Webb's shoulder as she wrote it, because it's brilliant and uses that 200-words-or-fewer format effectively to convey both the financial and the social need.

(Heck, I can't even say "good morning!" in fewer than 200 words!)

And now, the update. In the two days since those stories ran, we received enough donations to keep The Lord's Rain open for several more months! It proves that when more people know about The Lord's Rain and what it means to the people it serves, they will invest willingly. All it takes is a little publicity -- and now, we have an even stronger "hook" for that publicity: testimony from the people who use it. As I said in my last email, it's no longer just a "neat idea", but something that's actually showing positive results.

Give God the glory, working through the media and touching those who see the stories! It's certainly not the first time He has told me to "do what you do for a living: write a news release". The media have stepped up time and again to get the message out, and people have responded. In 2007 and 2008, as we were building the place, they caught the vision and came forward to make it happen; and now it's happening again.

We still have the issue of long-term continuous funding, and to that end, I'm working on a presentation to take to churches and organizations, describing then opportunity to be part of something operating in a mission field in their own back yard. It is a mission field, and a highly important one, at that.

The Lord's Rain celebrated its 5th anniversary on Tuesday (April 30), and support like this means there'll be a 6th anniversary ... and so forth.