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If you were a part of our local 40 Days for Life campaign, you will want to be sure to attend LifeSavers Ministries’ upcoming Hope for the Future banquet.  LifeSavers Ministries is the only organization which funded the local 40 Days for Life campaign, and the banquet will include information about results of our local campaign in addition to details about our future plans for 40 Days for Life.  If you need tickets for the event, please contact us as soon as possible!

Someone stopped by recently to thank you (yes, you — if you were involved in 40 Days for Life).  Terri Palmquist provided the following report passing along this word of thanks:

Yesterday at the end of the day at the abortion chamber,  a young woman approached me.  “I don’t know if you remember me, but I was going to have an abortion, and I talked to you.  You saved my baby’s life!”  I gave her and her noticeably pregnant belly a hug.  I got some more details from her.  I will call her “Irene.”

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On Sunday night, the last night of our 40 days, we joined together for a time of food, fellowship and sharing outside the LifeHouse pregnancy help center (across the street from the killing center).

Surrounded by the joyful sounds of children playing, I challenged the crowd to consider the successfulness of this campaign.  “If no children were saved from abortion,” I asked “would you consider this campaign to be a success?”

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Participating in 40 Days for Life has been an act of faith, as we have asked God to remove the scourge of abortion from our community and nation, and we have believed that He has the power to do so.  But if we truly believe that God will answer our prayers, He expects us to take another step.

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Recently a prayer vigil participant suggested that God would not want us to speak to women entering abortion chambers.  Instead, according to the suggestion, we should only pray, preferably with our mouths taped shut with “LIFE” tape as in the practice of the Bound4Life movement.  It is not the first time we have heard such a suggestion.  For example, someone told me once a few years ago that she was praying for us to be ”quiet before the abortion clients, but loud in our hearts to God.”  The usual motivation for such comments is the simple fact that when we speak outside the places where children are killed, people are often offended.

Obviously, we believe in the power of prayer, and we have experienced some wonderful blessings by being involved in the Bound4Life movement.  But the Bible is the foundation of everything we do, and although the Bible does teach the importance of prayer, it never teaches that we are to only pray.  Read the rest of this entry »

40 Days for Life officially ends at 11:59pm on Sunday, March 16.  For the final 7 hours, we will join together for a time of fellowship, food, and fun, (along with prayer and worship, of course) as we share the victories God has accomplished during this 40 day journey.  Read the rest of this entry »

In the final hours of darkness just before the sun rose on the morning after the final day of killing for these 40 Days for Life, I walked beside the field of 60 crosses which had been erected.  Although this was the smallest number of crosses we have erected so far, much less than the 79 crosses which stood after the first week of killing, the number of babies killed still seemed so staggering.

But then I saw it from another perspective: each cross represents not only a child killed, but a mother who is still living under the burden of sin, still hurting from the pain of her abortion experience.

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Several years ago, “Milagra” became pregnant after being drugged and raped by a family member.  She originally intended to abort the baby, but she changed her mind after accidentally calling LifeSavers Ministries instead of the abortion center.  “Javier” assisted LifeSavers by serving as an interpreter for Milagra.  When Milagra’s baby was born, she asked Javier to be her baby’s godfather.  Javier admired Milagra for her determination to make the right decision even though her circumstances were so difficult.

Recently, Milagra told Javier she was pregnant again.  Read the rest of this entry »

Father Peter West of Priests for Life joined many Catholics in prayer outside Bakersfield’s FPA abortion chamber on Monday, having several opportunities for conversations with women who were considering abortion.  One of those women encountered her children’s godfather just moments before she was scheduled to abort their sibling.  (I don’t have time to tell you all about this amazing testimony right now, but hopefully I can do so later.)  Fr. West blessed this mother after she repented of her abortion decision.

Today (Tuesday), about 25 students from WarCry School of Discipleship (based at Bethel Assembly of God in Tulare) are interceding outside Bakersfield’s killing center, many with “LIFE” tape over their mouths in the tradition of Bound4Life.

Catholics and Pentecostals are not the only ones interceding for the babies, of course.  Baptists and various other Christians have been agreeing in praying during this same time, as a beautiful example of God’s people putting aside our differences and fighting the good fight together.

As we enter the final week of the 40 Days for Life campaign, I am filled with conflicting emotions: excitement and frustration. God’s hand has been moving in so many ways over these past 33 days, as we have seen Him save lives, heal hearts, and activate His people to fulfill their divine calling. What is more exciting than knowing that you are a tool in the hands of the living God, that you are walking out the plans for which you were created?

But in all of the victories, the fact that 281 children have been brutally killed in Bakersfield since the beginning of 40 Days for Life is hard to overcome. My heart cries “How long, O Lord? How long must this slaughter continue in our community?”

Throughout the ages, one of the primary ways in which God’s people have responded to such tragedies is fasting (in particular, abstaining from food). It appears according to Scripture that, in some situations, fasting may be an essential requirement for victory. According to the Bible, fasting even helped save heathens, such as the people of Ninevah (Jonah 3:5-10). Read the rest of this entry »