Ministry Update - June 2017

     We Praise God for you! This past 2 weeks has been crazy with little office time to sit and write.  It is VERY encouraging to us to see fruit of God produced in others and to be a catalyst for that is humbling.  I guess we never really know which moments in our lives count for someone else in an eternal way.

     Ministry is a calling for sure: you have to know that you know or else you’ll let the vision slip from you.  I believe that we received the vision in 2011 for this ministry.  Even the name Christ Carries Me was given then.  It’s easy to see that God is with us because of the connections He’s made in relation to the vision.


     For instance: Hellen and Robert Howell and Anne and Al Sherril, two couples, both were
volunteers at Coffield for over 20 years.  They faithfully, week by week, went to the Coffield Boot Camp.  Even on Christmas day, there they were, it was a Saturday, second nature, no questions!


This has impacted us greatly to see people with hearts of gold that go.  Now we see Bro Robert and Sis Hellen pretty much once a month minimum and we are involved in street ministry together as a band (Vessels of Clay) among other things.  Family ties are made in the Blood of Jesus!

The street ministry is called Jesus Burger.   Yeah,  Jesus Burger!  It’s really simple.  The place it’s held is spotted, prayed and fasted over, cross-walked (with giant crosses these guys go door to door and knock on ‘em to love people), finalized and then the events start in that place and continue month to month.  They are usually held in the neighborhoods where the need is and the ministry is “free clothes, live music, free meal.”   Ministers like us are EVERYWHERE and you have a place wherever you go no matter where you are if you're in the Call.  We go and are present and accounted for.  When the meal is served we eat and fellowship with the people.  In the pictures you see, we’d be overdressed for a Jesus Burger… It's not about show, it's about relationship. Check out that LOGO!
 We’re blessed to be a part of that Ministry – On Mission Ministries out of Treasure Church, Longview Texas.  They multiply them in cities all over this area every weekend… Amazing people.

We went to the Boyd Unit a couple weekends ago too.  We RV’d like a pro!  Anne and Al and Hellen and Robert and I all stayed overnight because the service time is 7 am.  Robert, Hellen and I went to Tenn Colony directly after that, met up with David and went in to the TC @ Coffield for services.

God is good and faithful to supply open doors to us as we go along.  It’s really something to go and testify or to give a word to someone the Lord shows you.  God is SO good.

    Most recently we've connected with Mike Barber Ministries and Bill Glass Behind the Walls.




      We send our love to Mike Barber Ministries. We LOVE Sean and the team over there… Their hearts are for God and His in the jails… it’s a big deal, really.  We've entered in with them twice and look forward to working with them MUCH more in the near future.

     Mickey Webb wrote to us and suggested we touch base with Volunteer James Guerra.  Well we reached out to him through Mercy Heart where he was at last we knew and he called us back.  He’s now the area director for Bill Glass Ministries and he just so happens to have an event in our area coming up and needed help laying the foundations.  It is SO awesome the way God works.  They’re coming to the Henderson area and need over 200 volunteers to come along.  Here’s James and I at our meeting last week.  We’re excited to be a small part of what God is doing state-wide.  Fear not!

     We've been in talks with Kevin Brown.  He and his wife, Debra, are precious to us.  Also Sister Gardner, who is a mighty woman of God and since her husband Anthony passed away, she’s stood strong! She misses him greatly.  The way I figure, he’s missed by many.  Pastor Gardner, was a man you knew to approach well as the Spirit of the Lord was with him.  So, Kevin and I talk regularly.  He gave me a life verse one day in the beginnings of the Ministry vision and didn’t realize it at the time (Genesis 28:15).  That verse stuck with me HARD.  He is doing well and is working to get in to the prisons and volunteer also.  He’s as stout in the Lord as always and he still has a big head! (physically LARGE) 😊



TESTIFY!
        Leaving the old life behind is evidence of a true move of God.  It didn’t happen for me until then and I tried to do it on my own.  We were working in the ministry, laying hands on the sick, casting out devils, all that but so did the people in the book of Matthew BEFORE the Holy Ghost and the Salvation of Man!!!  I read once the verse “...but Lord, didn’t we cast out….  Yes, but depart from Me for I never knew you.”  WOAH! That frightened me to no end when I saw that!!  That was the beginning of what I call my “conversion”.  It was the truest point of my life in that I was able to see God as Holy and me as NOT AT ALL WORTHY.   But praise GOD for His Grace (Luke 11:5-13)!  After that experience, the Word came alive, my prayer life began to matter and the prayers I asked I could see being answered, God got involved…  I told God in that deepest pit, “Father, this is what I can do with my life.  I can’t.  You have to!”  and that, my friend, was it.  But HE had to bring me there, you know?  The thing is, now that I know church is full of messy people (As I was one and still am) I can go without being mad at the “hypocrites”.  Where else you want ‘em to be?  HOLY GHOST SETUP! YEAH!


 Dearest Reader: That's our update.  Know that we’re praying for you.  We Love you.  Peace!


Genuinely,

Rev JD Pierce
Executive Director
Christ Carries Me Ministries
p: +1 903.265.4424  f: +1 903.900.4981
a: Post Office Box 354, Carthage, Texas 75633-0354
w: ChristCarriesMe.org   e: JD@ChristCarriesMe.org

Beto I Wrap Up

Good evening!  We have completed another great trip into the Prison House and we thank God for the lost that have been found!  Many men who were downtrodden and discouraged have a new understanding that hope is more than just wishful thinking! Glory to God!  That's the cover, here's the story:
     Today was the second day for us going in to the Beto I Unit with Mike Barber Ministries (FB, like 'em, share 'em) and we have good reports to give. The staff, Major, Lieutenants, Sergeants, and CO's did a brilliant job at coordinating our efforts to maximize our impact inside the unit. We moved seamlessly between the various rows and wings of the Unit and with plenty of time to share the Love of Jesus with the men housed there. We saw reactions from all those we spoke with and were well received by all of the men, even an Orthodox Jew turned DEVOUT Muslim, all praise and honor be to God Almighty!  When you realize that your time with these men is limited and that your words need to impact that life in a very short span of this lifetime you begin to truly prayerfully consider, not only your words but also, your discernment of a willing heart versus an unwilling one. The Word of God records that the work of the evangelists in Acts was to bring the message and "some received and some don't". Hear me when I say I walked one row back and forth 3 times singing "Be not dismayed for the Lord will take care of you through the storm and through the rain, He will take care of you" BEFORE the Lord said, "here, stop here."  The Word was for a young man, I mean YOUNG, mid 20s maybe. He confessed immediately that he was on his way home in 50 days. The Word of the Lord came and spoke with such fervency and such strength that the young man at the bars was in tears, I was tearing up and even his cell mate who was curled up under a sheet pretending to be asleep was potentially added to the Kingdom just for being THAT close to the presence of the Lord. What a mighty God we serve. Just a side note: If you're reading this there is a GREAT potential that you too can experience loving others inside the prison house, it's free to get in!  Think on it huh!  They will even "feed" you.   But I digress.
     A second short testimony is on this: the Mike Barber Ministries volunteers are assigned in teams and they send each group together to different areas, each with a lead (point of authority and covering) and the process works well.  On our short break (men's room/refreshments) I was selected, among others from other teams, to go on a special assignment to the infirmary. This was an honor and promotion from the Lord indeed for it was in that place that we began to move in the deeper things of God.  We saw "terminally ill" labeled men, met them, spoke to them, prayed with them, declaring liberation to the captives from the spirits of infirmity and despair and even rebuking the spirit of death from a man who had lost all hope and nearly given up completely as his diagnosis was liver failure from chronic hepatitis c, which is NOW CURABLE!  We prayed with a man who had just had surgery to remove parts of his intestines due to a cancer diagnosis, he was near or above 70 and in a wheelchair and when I asked "do you know Jesus" he said "no". He had never met our Savior guys! He's an American man, African American at that, and had NEVER been led to Christ??  How lacking in this are we?  What in the WORLD?  I asked him if he'd heard the gospel and he had but had never been counseled nor had he sought out Jesus by asking for salvation - 0 experience with Jesus!  I asked if he wanted that and he said yes. He said "Jesus Save me!" With hot tears in his old and tired eyes, but now there was a fire there that wasn't there before, a hope, an expectation that Salvation also includes Deliverance and Healing as provided through the cross!  We prayed the prayer of James 5, he confessed his faults and I mean really talked about some things with repentance in his mannerisms, and we prayed according to the Word of God that he be healed and I FULLY expect to hear that report later after it's confirmed by the Medical Staff. Amen?  Amen!!
      On our way out of the infirmary I met with the PA in her office. She is a Spirit filled child of the Most High God who years prior, at 20 years old and attending Rhema Bible College, requested that God send her to the people that were closest to hell: today she manages and oversees this infirmary AND a hospice on Michael's Unit, the ONLY hospice in TDCJ that resides inside of a Maximum security prison!  She rejoiced to have been blessed with such a fortune and what a blessing that is to know that there are genuine thankful loving people touching the darkest areas of the Penitentiary! Glory!

Well, that is encouraging and I hope you have found encouragement here. Comment or write us and let us know what you think.  We're waiting to hear from you.

Here is Mike at one of the services here, we will get more pictures, we'll share them.  We love you and we're praying for you.

Be blessed!
JD Pierce
President
Christ Carries Me Ministries