I submitted the following write-up to SPSE national to officially enter our team into the Sent4Lent drawing!

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This Lent, the SPSE Cambridge team took part in the Sent4Lent challenge! We had four regular outings, handing out Rosaries and striking up conversations with passersby on the streets of Harvard Square. In addition to our four regular outings, we also participated as street evangelists in one other event called Ignite, hosted by a variety of ministries in Boston (which SPSE Cambridge has recently joined in on). At Ignite, we were inviting people off the street to come into St. Leonard’s church in Boston for a time of Adoration and Praise+Worship! Across the five outings, we had participation from six different SPSE evangelists besides me! (Shoutouts to Paul S., Mary L., Dan E., Petra K., Maryanne M., and Daniel M., who helped make our Sent4Lent participation possible!) I’ll share an anecdote from each of our four regular outings.

March 8, 2025 (Saturday 3-5p) - SPSE Outing #1

The interaction that most stands out from our first outing was with a woman probably in her early twenties. She was with a male friend, but the conversation was mostly with her while he listened. She was quite spiritual (and maybe also searching a bit?), so she welcomed conversation with us. Basically, she had grown up Christian, but then due to some life circumstances, she had left faith altogether. But then she realized life was very difficult without some kind of belief in something transcendent, so she began journaling to The Universe. While this isn’t what we would do as Christians, we listened, and she thanked us for not judging her. We asked her if she’d like us to pray for her then and there, and she accepted. Her friend said that he did not know how to pray, but we assured him that there was nothing special he needed to do or say, and that by simply being there, he was participating. Please pray for these two lovely souls! 

March 21, 2025 (Friday 7-8p) - SPSE Outing #2

For this second outing, we tried a new time of day: Friday 7-8pm. In general, people seemed less willing to talk on a Friday night. We handed out a number of Rosaries but never got engaged in any longer conversations. The most notable encounter during that outing was with a young man. Upon learning he was Catholic, our evangelist Paul asked him how his Lent was going. The young man said that he wasn’t doing much for Lent because he lived at home and had to keep from his family the fact he is Catholic. Paul encouraged him to take up invisible acts of fasting this Lent. The young man accepted a rosary and later came back to us to get two more to give to his friends!

April 4, 2025 (Friday 7-8p) - SPSE Outing #3

Our third outing was on another Friday night. It wound up being an evening of rather atypical encounters. It’s fun to talk about evangelization when it seems to go well, but the reality is that sometimes things don’t seem to go well. Some days, nearly every interaction just feels awkward, and you walk away feeling like you’ve reached no one. Fortunately, our perception may not align with reality, as we have no idea how mightily God is moving. Every time I try to write down an encounter from that evening in a way that makes sense and that our interlocutor would probably be okay with me sharing, I just wind up backspacing it. So I’ll just share a more typical encounter from that night, even though there’s really not much to the story: we met a group of three undergraduate girls from Harvard who are Catholic and loved that we were handing out rosaries. It is always uplifting to encounter fellow believers who encourage us in what we are doing!  

April 13, 2025 (Sunday 3-5p) - SPSE Outing #4

During our fourth outing, we spoke with an Argentinian woman who was enthusiastic to receive a rosary. While we were chatting, we asked her if she needed prayer for anything. She revealed that she was experiencing joint pain in her knees. She also requested prayer for better-paying work. After we prayed for her, she said that she felt something inside. I asked her how her knees felt. She said that they felt better! After we said goodbye and she was walking away, she turned back to us from some distance and called out, “They feel a LOT better!” As my co-evangelist, a seminarian, noted: “The power of prayer.” Praise God!