GLOW put together a mission trip to distribute 1 million tracts in Philadelphia when Pope Francis visited America. Check the video out and visit 1millionglow.org to see more information about the upcoming million tract mission trip for the 2016 Super Bowl!

<p>GLOW put together a mission trip to distribute 1 million tracts in Philadelphia when Pope Francis visited America. Check the video out and visit <a href="http://1millionglow.org/">1millionglow.org</a> to see more information about the upcoming million tract mission trip for the 2016 Super Bowl!</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

GLOW

Nelson Ernst

Million GLOW Papal Mission Trip

Basically, everything starts, we all have to meet together at 7.45 every single morning to begin our chores.

But even before that, you gotta get up early so that you can spend time with God, take your shower, get yourself prepared.

And then, you know, so we get together, we have our chores around 745, breakfast 915, and then we have worship.

After that, we go immediately into training.

And then we basically pray, and we hop in the cars, we drive 50 minutes, get to Philly and start passing out those tracks like crazies.

Driving to Philly was an interesting experience.

The closer you got to the city the more billboards you saw which were just welcoming Pope Francis.

You'd see all kinds of on the way to Philly you'd see all kinds of signs saying that major freeways are gonna be closed as you got closer to the weekend.

Just everything on the way there or I should say many things, just really told you, hey, the papal visit is coming.

Yeah, so our team was a pretty good mix of a lot of different ethnicities, a lot of different ages.

We had people coming as missionaries all the way from Hawaii to people who were even just local.

They'd come out on day trips with us who were, you know, Philly residents or from New Jersey.

Most of them were young adults, but we had some folks who were a bit older.

We even had 1 woman who was not only older, but she had some medical issues where she could only walk, you know, about 4 to 6 hours a day at most.

When praying and thinking about the mission trip, I remember Nelson sharing with me a quote that he had found that really confirmed the impressions that he had to do this mission trip, and that is where she says that as time comes to a close, that great and large events and large gatherings of people will take place, and that we need to be there scattering the pamphlets like Lillia's model.

And I mean, she says specifically, when the world is coming to an end, there'll be great gatherings with a lot of people.

And that as Seventh-day Adventists, we need to be there with truth-filled, present-truth literature.

And when he shared that with me, I was like, it's over, let's do it.

What in the world this is so bizarre yeah like you on the train.

Is this legal right now what is going on?

I don't know if I'm supposed to be driving on these or not.

Leading up to the Pope's actual visit to Philadelphia, we spent about 8 days distributing glow tracks to the major, to all the major areas of Philadelphia, all the urban areas and the neighborhoods, also to the universities, and we would, we covered tons and tons of streets of downtown Philadelphia, narrow streets, packed with people and cars.

And that's where we got out a good amount of our tracks, leading up to the final 2 days and that's when we went to the crowds.

As 1 of the leaders on the mission trip I had the privilege of driving around the neighborhood picking up my students or missionaries and dropping them off and I would you know sit at stop signs sit at stoplights driving down the street and when I think about the impact that we were making it's just tremendous because I really got a feel of what those people were going through.

I mean I would drive by and sit at a stop sign and people would be yelling at each other.

I see people sitting there addicted to drugs.

I would see people in the richer neighborhoods just walking by with their smart phones and their glasses and their nice cars.

And I just saw and I got a taste of what it's like to live a life without Jesus.

When I think of the magnitude of literature that we passed out, there has to be some impact.

Basically, when it came to what the city was like, I mean, Philadelphia, you have a lot of different kinds of communities in Philadelphia.

But the kind of area that we worked the most was the places where there was the most amount of people, the highest concentrations, where there were the most cars parked on the streets or there were the closest jammed tiny houses together.

We were just looking for large amounts of people.

So basically the vast majority of our time when we were working neighborhoods in Philadelphia was spent in the downtown, downtown section right around City Hall and it was pretty ghetto to say the least.

In fact, the last night that I was working in Philly, I actually had a cop pick up 2 of my people on my team and move them to a safer spot in town, which actually was really perfect because I needed to pick them up anyway.

And he just moved them to a more convenient location to do that.

The police are really on our side out there.

I mean, they even came up and told us, hey, we've seen you guys out here.

We know what you're doing, and just want to let you know that we're not gonna stop you, but that we're out here to keep an eye out for you and protect you.

After we prayed together, I look up, there's a lady in a car sitting next to me, and she's like, are you the 1 handing out these tracts?

I go over to her, and I realize she has a cop uniform on.

And immediately I'm like, oh no, is she asking for these so she can like get on our case?

She's like no no, I really want a couple sets of these I work with so many people that I have to talk with about this stuff that I could just share them this paper and have them read it!

She said, yeah, I work with the 25th district here in Philadelphia.

And we would put double-sided tape on the back of this glow hanger and we would put it in public areas where you could hang stuff up.

And then we would go to the, we sent a few people into the subways.

We had people telling us like, hey, I've been seeing these around.

And so we really hit a lot of people we created a lot of awareness a lot of people either got the glow tracks or they knew that we were in town.

Because people take these and they, you know, they take them from you, but they're not going to read them.

Do you see them coming to Christ with this?

People go to these links on the back, they call in, they get Bible studies, they get this book, they watch a documentary here, and they get a lot more than actually what's right here.

So, it's not really, this is kind of like the worm on the end of the line and then you know.

It's kind of like a way to pour the bread.

And then, and the real good stuff is here.

Well, like I said, They can sign up for Bible studies, they can find a church in a nearby area, and then we can connect with them.

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Million GLOW Papal Mission Trip

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