Could you do this?

You do get the name, right? The Church exists on both sides of the red doors?" As in both inide and ouside, members and nonmembers?

Just checking. One of my friends asked, "What, the right and the left?"

From time to time, I'll point out where God is working way outside of St. Johns'.

Meet Rais Bhuiyan.



     He came to the U.S. from Pakistan hoping to further his education. In 2001, he was working in a convenience sture in Dallas.

     Enter Mark Stroman. Distressed over a percieved lack of government response to 9/11, he embarked on a one man crusade to, "to retaliate on local Arab Americans, or whatever you want to call them." He killed two men, one Indian Pakastani, one Indian.

     The night he came into the store where Bhuiyan worked, he asked "Where are you from?" and then shot Bhuiyan in the face. 

      After multiple surgeries, Bhuiyan remains blind in one eye.

     As he recovered, he realized that it wasn't just his body that needed healing. He is a Muslim, and he knew that he needed to forgive. So he is now working to have Stroman's death sentence (he is scheduled to be executed on the 20th of this month) commuted to life in prison.

     "According to my faith in Islam, there is no hate, no killing. It doesn't allow anything like that," says Bhuiyan. "Yes, Mark Stroman did a horrible thing, and he brought a lot of pain and disaster, sufferings in my life. But in return I never hated him."

     Sura 5, verse 32 from the Quran, states, "If someone slays one person, he has slain mankind entirely. And if someone has saved one person, he has saved mankind entirely."

     Visit his website at worldwithouthate.org. Learn a bit about compassion and mercy.

Red, White, and Vlue on the Rack

It's come to this...I'm having theme days on the free clothing rack in front of the church.

Well, some of our customers don't have a lot of excitement in their lives.

Ah, the rack. It is emblematic of what good small ministries can do. And its been evolvong for more than 20 years.

Someone was cleaning their closets, and thought some of the ladies from the weight loss group that met at St. John's baxk then might like them. A rack was set us and a 25 cents sign affixed.

Everybody loved it! And so it went for a while.

Then we realized that some folk swho came through the doors couldn't afford the quarter per item...so we took down the sign.

Then we realized that some of the folks who need clothes don't come to church or to meetings or whatever...so wemoved the rack outside.

Its gotten to wherre folks just com and hang up their stuff, or leave non--clothing items. Someone has recently takern to leaving bags full of soap. Hooray!

It is really low maintainance. Community service volunteers are good for putting clothes on hangers. The rack strays out when weather allows--I forgot to roll it in one night, and the next day someone tearfully told me how kind it was of us to let it out for people who are too embarassed to look at a free rack during the day. Oh!

I have no idea how much gets given away. I did sonme figuring one day and came up with about 5,000 items per year. That's ballpark, but its pretty good for something that takes literally a couple of hours a week and costs nothing.

People have all sorts of bright ideas about how to improve it.  "Why don't you turn your hall into a thrift store?" Well, because the folks who use the hall wouldn't be happy--and that includes the folks who come to our healing service in the hall on the 3rd Sunday of each month because they can't make the stairs. A very nice professional do-gooder once offred to get me bundles sorted by season and size from a wharehouse in Kentucky. Sweet, but it desn't strike me as extremely green to be trucking clothes back and forth to Kentucky when folks aare doing a fine job of supplying us right here.

We don't have everything all the time, of course, but we haave faith that folks will find what they need. And we get to have conversations about that, and find out what it is they do neeed.

It's a nice little ministry. And if you hurry, you can get in on the red white and blue special!