“Please Pray With Me”

As we share a few stories with you please keep us and these people in prayer. Everyday there is another opportunity to help bring healing to a hurting heart—Jesus is so passionate about reaching His people. Thank you for joining us in this rescue mission.

Home Group on Mondays 10am-Noon

Miguel & Soila (pictured below with Justice)

Consuelo (Soila’s mom)
Primo & Vere (2 children: Denis y Alisa and niece)

Home Group on Wednesdays 6:30pm-8:30pm

Francisco & Zaira (3 kids: Jair, Yamilect, Melody)

Carlos- It was one of those times you walk by somebody and you feel a tug in your heart to go talk to them. I knew it was the Holy Spirit, but I really wanted to keep walking. Yet, I found myself, while somewhat reluctantly, returning to talk to this young man sitting against the wall with his bike at the park. All I did was invite him to the service that we were holding around the corner. He got up almost immediately and began to walk in that direction thanking me. I continued on to the other part of the park where we have the children’s ministry to get things set up there. While we were cleaning up at the end this same young guy came back and began sharing how he had just been robbed early that day and being so upset about that had gone and drunk more beer than he should have. He asked if I would “Please could you come to my house this week and pray with me.” We’ve been asking God to draw people to Himself and help us to be a part of the process and here was Carlos, an answer to that prayer. I had a great time of conversation and prayer at his house later that week and now we are waiting to meet up with him at our Wednesday night home group. He shared that his mother, who still lives in Guatemala, is a believer and that he has always thought he was too, but is now realizing that he can’t be a Christian just because his mom is and is making some real steps to make a personal decision to follow Jesus for himself. Please help pray him into the Kingdom and into spiritual maturity as we continue to meet with him.

Efran, Luis, Santo, Gegorio- These four guys are day labor workers that I met last week. They came out to our service out in the park and I was able to share the Gospel with them. They said they were interested in coming back every Sunday and also coming to our house for our home group on Wednesday. Pray with us for these men and many others to come get connected to God and raised up as men of influence.

Outreach at the Park Sundays 3:30pm-5:30pm

Italia- Part of the vision of our outreach on Sundays at our park is to “empower parents to raise godly children” and have the parents join the team (and eventually take over) this ministry. We want to eventually pass the baton on to others. While we’re waiting for the right connections to arise from the parents, we’ve begun training our first “junior volunteer”. Since she has been coming faithfully along with her younger sisters and a brother we’ve had our eye on here. She is part of the family of 10 that live in the park. She is very bright and since she is much older than the majority of the children that come it seemed like a good opportunity to begin the training up even if it wasn’t a mother or father, but a 14 year old girl. Fabiola has been meeting with Italia once a week after school and is working with her on how to do as much during the outreach as possible, while working on her Bible knowledge and memorization and character things. Please pray that she will be a key to reaching her parents and the first of many we can train to lead this and future ministries.

Upcoming Birthday Party/Outreach (Saturday, November 7th)

Please pray with us also for Rebecca’s 4th birthday party. We are gearing up for a big birthday celebration where we are going to invite virtually everyone we have met and can think of to help provide some more relationship building time. This will probably be our first real big expense as we’re planning on a lot of food, a piñata of course and maybe even a jump-house (which is almost par for the course around here). We want Rebecca to feel special and honored, but this is just as much an excuse to get people to come and spend time with us and we even hope we’ll get invited to their houses for future parties and events. Neither of us are very gifted in ‘party planning’ so beyond the spiritual aspects of relationships and conversations please pray for everything to go smoothly before, during and after.

South Park Statistics and Needs

South Central Los Angeles is among the poorest, most congested and medically deprived areas in the county. In less than a decade, the population has grown at triple the overall country rate. Slightly more than 55% of South L.A.’s 1.32 million people are under 17 years of age, yet the areas has just 11 pediatricians per 1,000 patients, compared with 57 in the county as a whole and a whopping 193 per 1,000 children and adolescents on the Westside (of LA). Source: “Regents Can Heal South LA” by Tim Rutten, LA Times, 09/19/09

We’ve heard it called the ‘donut effect’ because when you plot hospitals, retail stores and other services and commodities on a map they all make a donut shape with a hole right where we are living and ministering among the poor. Whatever the reason, whether it is motivated by money or convenience, it has left a critical mass of people underserved and in many ways forgotten.

The map above shows Los Angeles and its suburbs surrounded by the red circle. We live and minister where the red cross is located. The red dots represent hospitals and medical centers. As you can see inside of the donut (the black circle, representing South Central Los Angeles) there are only 2 hospitals for the over 1.1 million people that live in that area. By the way, some 98,000 people have moved into that area in the last few years. This compared to the 27 hospitals for all the people in downtown, West and North LA and the suburbs.

We’ve spent the last few months out and about trying to get ‘the pulse’ of the area—seeking to understand both the felt and real physical and spiritual needs of the area. We want our impact here to be lasting and powerful and believe that doing the best we can to understand who we are ministering to will help. We know there is much to learn, but we are also grateful to have the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

We would like to share some more information specifically about the neighborhood that we live in (South Park) through some statistics (Source: 2000 Census) so that you can get a better perspective on where we are and get some more insight on how to pray for us and our neighbors.

Population
While the population of the South Park area is about average for Los Angeles, it is one of the smallest and most densely populated neighborhoods. There are about 30,500 people living in an area of 1.4 square miles (which means there are about 21,650 people living per square mile). This of course does not count the homeless that live in the park and on the street.

Centered around “South Park” a large, diverse park the South Park Neighborhood is where we will be planting a church. Its 30,500 residents are our focus for outreach, discipleship and leadership training. Currently we have two weekly small group meetings at our house (located across from the park where the “A” marker is located) along with several other one-on-one times.

Income
We are in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Los Angeles. The median yearly household income is $29,500. To put that statistic in perspective remember that most households here contain extended family working to pay the bills together—so that isn’t usually one persons pay for a year, but several.

Housing
72% of households are renters. We’ve been able to meet with a few different individuals in these last couple weeks in their own homes (rather than at our home or another location such as the park) and have been amazed at how many medium sized homes have been converted into 5 or 6 separate units with little care taken in the quality of work put into the subdivisions. There are also an amazing amount of bold cockroaches, ants and vermin living in these homes that freely walk around during the daylight hours.

Ethnicity
While not especially diverse for Los Angeles, the population of Latinos and Blacks is one of the highest in the city. Roughly there is 80% Hispanics and 20% African-Americans living in the South Park area.

Mexican (57.2%) and Salvadoran (2%) are the most common ancestries. (Many children are born with mixed ancestry, for example, Mexican-Salvadoran. It is our observation that there are quite a few Salvadorans, Guatemalans and even a handful from Honduras in our community, but clearly the majority is from Mexico.) 49.4% of residents of South Park are foreign born, which is one of the highest in Los Angeles. Mexico (76.8%) and El Salvador (10.2%) are the most common foreign places of birth.

Families
At the time of the census there were 1,126 single mothers—or 20% of the families—which, again is among the highest percentages in the city of single mothers. Also among the city’s highest, is the number of men and women who have never been married (whether living with someone or on their own). At this point everyone we are ministering to is either single or living together, but not married. We sense that teaching about godly relationships and on how to raise godly children are two of the most important biblical life-skills that we can offer our community.

Schools
Of the 7 schools in this area only one ranks 3/10 (still horrible), while the rest rank 1/10 in the California ranking system. The city is currently building a new high school 3 blocks from our house that should be ready to open by next fall.

Education
About 34% of the population has not completed high school—again amongst the city’s highest.

Education level

Age
The median age is 23 years old, young in comparison to the rest of the city. The percentages of residents in the age range 0-10 and 11-18 are some of the highest in the city of Los Angeles.

Age

While statistics only give part of the story we hope that these numbers will stir you up to pray over some of the specific needs of our neighborhood and some of the direction we feel led to take to share the full-gospel with our neighbors in word and deed. We are so blessed that we have a team of people that through prayer and financial gifts have made moving into this community a possibility so that we might continue to see the nations come to a saving knowledge of His Kingdom. As Eugene Peterson says in The Message (from John 1:14), “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.” We’re excited about brining Jesus to as many households as possible in Los Angeles, starting right here in our neighborhood.

Thank you for being a part!