FRANKLIN, Tenn. (BP)–Reunion recording artist Matt Brouwer visited New York City in early October with a Michigan youth group that had asked him to join in the trip. Brouwer and the youth visited local city schools, prepared and delivered food to firefighters and rescue workers and prayed with firefighters from a Manhattan fire station.
Brouwer and his band led worship during a prayer service in Queens at Crossway Church, where the ministers have been working long hours trying to comfort people in their community. “It was a privilege,” Brouwer said, “to be able to offer help in some small way to the brave and selfless people working night and day to share the hope of Jesus in these dark times.”
In addition to visiting a local city elementary school in Yonkers where he performed for the school children, Brouwer and his band also had an opportunity to play worship songs to a mostly non-Christian group of kids from Fort Apache in the Bronx. Immediately following, Brouwer worked with a local community center preparing food for New York firefighters and rescue workers at ground zero.
Later that evening, Brouwer and a few others from the community center delivered the meals to the workers at a local Manhattan fire station, but found that God had a greater purpose for their presence than food. The fire chief of this particular station was among the missing at ground zero and the firefighters had, just seconds before, received confirmation that the chief’s body had been found and identified.
“It was such an emotional experience,” Brouwer recounted. “We gathered in a circle around these weary men and prayed for them. Being in New York was an extremely emotional experience, but until you share a glimpse of the grief these people are going through on a daily, non-stop basis, it’s impossible to comprehend.
“God’s presence is definitely in the middle of the confusion and pain in New York,” he said. “People are working together to lift each others’ spirits and hope, and yet it was very sobering to be there, knowing how many families are missing loved ones and coming to grips with the devastation on so many levels.”
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(BP) photo posted in the BP Photo Library at http://www.bpnews.net. Photo title: DELIVERING FOOD.
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