Monday, September 8 - Abortion Mill Update

            Although we got to the abortion mill later than we had hoped to yesterday morning and there were already a few cars in the parking lot when we arrived, it ended up not being as busy as some days. Since there were only a handful of us on the sidewalks, though, we were kept very well occupied. We were thankful to have the sound permit (which has been a rarer occurrence recently) and my father was able to use our handheld microphone.

I spent the morning intercepting cars at one of the two driveways and farther up the road. It is nice to catch the cars out in the road before they start to pull in so that we don’t have to deal with the “security” person telling us to “stop blocking the driveway!”. As a Christian, I believe in being a law-abiding citizen and thus never try to block the driveway. However when it is a matter of life and death such as we face at the abortion mills, we “must obey God rather than man” and it can get challenging to have that perfect balance!

The most significant encounter that I had was with a post-abortive mother. When I first stopped her I asked if she was there for an abortion. She said that no, she was there for a follow-up appointment. I was in the mindset to address mothers coming for abortions, so I wasn’t quite prepared with what to say. Feeling the need to get wisdom from the Lord, I asked her if I could pray with her. She readily agreed and I took that opportunity to pray, among other things, that she would see her need for God and that He would give her a desire to live for Him and obey Him. After praying with her, I wanted to get a sense of where she was at with the Lord, so I asked her if she had ever read the Bible. She said yes, and pointed to a Bible in her car. Just then, the “security” man came down and told her to move. I encouraged her to pull over so that we could continue to talk. She said “just a minute” and pulled into the parking lot. I thought that would be the end of our conversation, but after she parked her car she came over. My father had joined me at that point and we continued to talk with her. One thing that we asked her was: if she had it to do over again, would she still have an abortion? Her answer was an immediate and clear, "no". She came over to talk to us again after her appointment and we were able to share some of the gospel with her and connected her with one of the ladies we minister with who had an abortion in the past. Please pray that as she has contact with her God will open this mother’s heart to take responsibility for her part in her child’s murder and that she will see her need for repentance and a new heart.

Another woman I talked to was walking along the road. She was on her phone and headed toward the mill, so I was sure she was going in. I walked up to her and held out the booklet that I had. She took it and kind of took her phone away from her ear. I asked her if she was there for an abortion. She looked around and said no. So I asked her if she was just passing through and she said that she was. I wasn’t sure whether or not to believe her. She said that she knew there was an abortion clinic there because she could hear us from her house sometimes but that she wasn’t going there. She did say that she had a sister who was pregnant and abortion-minded, so she would give her the booklet. Then she went walking up the road away from the mill. Later she came walking back through and talked to one of the other ladies on the sidewalk. We found out that she has four children. Her sister later contacted that sidewalk counselor and we found out that that sister is six months pregnant but in a very difficult financial situation. We never know how contacts may happen out there and praise God for this opportunity to contact someone who wasn’t even there!

As far as we know, there was one “save” yesterday in which a baby was saved from death and a mother from a lifetime of grief and pain. Praise God!

Just as a note so that you know how and when to pray: The opportunity has opened up for us to go out to this clinic every other Monday and a different clinic every other Tuesday, so that is our schedule for right now. Please pray for us and the others that go out to minister that we would be kept by the power of God and not grow weary. The spiritual battle is strong, but our God is stronger!