Counties Evangelist, Lee Marsland, shares how Encounter Ministries saw 35 commit their lives to Jesus in December.

Lee is the Community Pastor in Oldham working with Encounter Ministries. He’s married to Lesley and has a heart for the lost in the community. He has a real passion for street preaching, regularly going out with members of the local church onto the streets of Manchester, Blackpool, and parts of Wales to sing worship songs and share testimonies, as well as preaching the Gospel and offering prayer. As part of their ministry, they run the Lighthouse, a facility that provides food, support, and fellowship to those in need.

LEE’S STORY

As part of their ministry at the Lighthouse, Lee spends so much of his time with people on the ‘margins’ of society - just like Jesus. In today’s ‘Testimony Tuesday’, he shares how God has moved in the last year.

“On Christmas Eve, we hosted a Christmas celebration for our VIPs and, as all year round, we centre all we do around the Gospel, we took this amazing opportunity to have a Gospel-themed celebration which consisted of great food ( a full Christmas dinner with all the trimmings ) generously donated from a local butcher. We danced, sang, and laughed, and we made sure everyone received Christmas presents.

I invited a couple of people to share their testimonies and powerful stories of how Jesus transformed their lives. As I sat with our guests, the Lord whispered, “Did you bring your net?”

This convicted me, so I got up to say Grace before dinner was served and preached the gospel. Thirty-five men and women gave their lives to Jesus, and many more cried out to be delivered from addictions. It was so powerful—all Glory to God. On the night, we gave out some amazing donations of brand-new clothes and trainers, hats and gloves, and warm coats.

We have been promised that these donations will become regular offerings, and we are super excited about this. We fully understand that we have a lot of people this year. More than seventy people have committed to Jesus and will need nurturing and help growing in their faith. So, we are looking at starting some sort of community church they can attend, with the aim of helping them become established in their walk with God and then signposting them into strong Bible-believing churches.”