Merry Christmas

Hello everyone, we hope you and yours are doing well.

First, everyone at Buchanans in the Wild and Rest For Your Soul would like to wish all of you a Very Merry Christmas. Let us all pause for a moment to remember the true meaning of Christmas….. Jesus.


Today God blessed us with an amazing outreach. Because of it being just a couple of days before Christmas, we decided to make it special. Chick-Filet-A blessed us with 60 chicken sandwiches and even let us borrow one of their heated bags. I made a bout 15 pounds of macaroni and cheese, Tuck and Debbie made a few hundred hand frosted and decorated cookies and Bernardo and Vivian made dozens of goodie bags with candy and gospel tracts. We set up a large table and chairs right on the street corner for the people to sit and enjoy their meal. 
God made the weather perfect, a beautiful warm sunny day. 


I was able to sit a talk with a few guys as they finished eating and one whom I hadn’t met before names Jeff stayed to talk after the others left. As we talked Jeff said, with tears streaming down his cheeks, that he knew he wasn’t living right and he knew that he needed Jesus. I asked what was stopping him. He paused for a second and said, “nothing.” As I led him, he prayed, now fully crying, for Jesus to forgive him for his sins and be his Lord and Savior (abridged version). 


When finished, I welcomed another brother to the Kingdom.


Later, as I was talking with my beautiful bride, a young woman walked past the food and everyone else, straight up to us and said, “Do you remember me?!?!”


I will admit, I did not and neither did Melissa. Turns out, she had come to the Tuesday outreach quite a few times during the spring and summer while she was pregnant. She ended up having her baby while in jail for a month. Since getting out, she is off the streets, engaged and working on getting custody of her children.


Her, her fiancé and her mom were driving by and she told them “We have to stop so I can tell them how I am doing”.


What a blessing. For her to stop her day, and theirs, just to tell us that she was doing well and that we were a small part of that was such an encouragement.


After the outreach, I got to help Justin, one of our regulars, retrieve his cell phone. Someone had thrown it on top of a building a few days ago and Justin had been trying to find someone with a ladder to help him get it. Justin was stuck with me for 2 hours as we drove back to the storage unit, unloaded the stuff, team debrief and prayer, then to my house to get the ladder, to the building were his cell phone was and back to were he needed dropped off. Most of that time I told him about Jesus. He would mention how hard it was to break free from addiction, or to do the right thing or deal with difficult people. Whatever he brought up, by God’s grace, I was able to point him to Jesus in very practical ways not just “Jesus is the answer to everything”, (which He is) but in ways that even a very worldly person could see. Thank you Lord.


What a wonderful day.


As always we greatly appreciative your prayers and support.
If anyone feels led to support us financially you can do on our website


https://buchanansinthewild.com and click on the “Give” button.


You can also purchase supplies for the Rest For Your Soul Ministry at our Amazon store.


https://amzn.to/3YI6Ei5


Thank you and God bless you.
Much Love
Derek, Melissa and Alex
Buchanans in the Wild