Daily Victories

There is no shortcut.  Except Jesus.  It still seems long though…the process of being molded and shaped in His image.  We come with rough edges and character deficient of everything that God is, but through His grace we have victory.  Victory lies in overcoming obstacles every day.  Little by little, but not in our own strength.  Here in South Central Los Angeles, we are still caught off guard at times by the tremendous obstacles that people must overcome.  When we see success it is because they have fallen into Christ’s arms, received His embrace and become one of His children.  It’s the only way.  It’s what we are all about.  We want to introduce more people to Jesus!

 

Updates

 

Family Camp

Family Camp this year was fantastic!  There was a great balance of fun, team building and competition with worship, prayer and time in the Word.  We had great fellowship as a church, families had time to rest as families and we had four baptisms too!

 

We broke our church into three groups and each group was responsible to plan and teach a session for the children.  The theme this year was “Transparency”.  We taught on how sin has become a wall between us and God and between us and others.  We talked about the many masks we wear, the blaming and the hiding that takes place.  Several people had breakthroughs as we talked about how Jesus has allowed us to break down those walls and old ways of living and thinking.  As we address these issues people are able to see clearly that God doesn’t just want us “saved”, but also constantly growing in His likeness. 

 

 

 

 

We played a game that illustrated the need to know, hear and obey God’s voice to get to our final destination.  Kids and adults alike were impacted and talking about the new revelations and understanding God was giving them.  

 

The various teams organized different lessons for the children.  One team wrote a puppet show.  They even sewed one of their own puppets and the curtain.  What a great time to build families up and allow God to minister to us from early in the morning until late at night! 

 
 
 

 

Youth

Through small group discipleship times, our new youth group on Fridays and the other corporate church meetings and events our youth have been learning a lot about community in the Body of Christ and about sharing their faith with others. They passed out socks with hygiene packets to the homeless in the park in front of our church recently and were really excited in the challenge of talking to people about Jesus. Pictured below is a group of the youth that went to the LA County Fair for a fun excursion.

 

Leaders in Training

Chad will be going on a retreat with our two Leaders in Training (LITs) Italia and Alex (pictured below) September 22-23 to plan out the year and press into God more. 

Pray that both of these young people would grow leaps and bounds in their personal devotion to Christ, their character and leadership. 

 
Family

Pictured at below are our two children Rebecca (6) and Justice (4) on their first day of school.

They both love being in school. 

We are so thankful for Ms. Hammond (Kindergarten) and Mrs. Abe (Second grade) their wonderful Christian teachers. 

 
 Justice turns 5 on October 4^th!

We can’t believe how fast time flies.  Justice has lived most of his life on the mission field. 

Rebecca’s faith in God is growing deeper.  She is a great older sister – very loving and caring for her brother. 

 

News

The helicopters above us circling seemingly just out of reach and the numerous sirens jetting past our home are part of life here in South Central.  Please pray protection and that Christ’s love and holiness would truly penetrate the hardened hearts and darkness that lurks here. 

 

Here are two events that happened over last two weeks just blocks from us that impacted the families from our church in one way or another:

 

A 100 year old man ran over 9 children and 2 adults as they exited the school (Rebecca’s old school) critically injuring 4.  Thankfully every one ended up living. 

 

 

Bank robbers tossed money out of their car during police chase causing a mob scene.  Many people think that society has robbed them so much that they are entitled to the money they grabbed during what is being called a “Robin Hood” chase. 

 

 
 

 

Please Pray with Us…..

ü  Church without us! 

We are taking a family vacation to refresh and refill and will miss the church gatherings on a Wednesday and a Sunday.  Then the following Sunday we will be away at a World Impact missionary retreat – so what a wonderful opportunity to give our emerging leadership more of an opportunity to do the many things we are doing on a weekly basis. 

They will be running the nursery, the children’s class, the worship, all the set-up and clean-up, teaching the message, even running the Bible club and tutoring programs we have in the afternoon.  Please pray for spiritual protection and growth as they go through this important time without us. (It feels a bit like sending our children off to school on the first day of Kindergarten.)

 

ü  New People Arriving

We have an exciting wave of new visitors coming to the church.  All of them have been invited by people in the church (previously it was all through our invitations).  Pray that we would do a good job integrating and retaining these new arrivals into our church family. 

 

ü  Family grieving the loss of two

Last week one of the ladies from our church lost her mom to a heart attack.  She hasn’t seen her mom for ten years since moving here from Guatemala.  Then we got a call as this letter was being written that her brother-in-law (husband’s brother) who was living with them just was hit by a car on his bike and killed immediately on the same intersection mentioned above where the bank robbers were detained and the mob formed.  Please pray for comfort and strength for this family. 

Both the father and the oldest daughter have birthdays this week.  The daughter understands that her birthday party they were organizing must be cancelled at this time.  Also pray for us that we may know how to wisely and effectively walk them through the grieving process and even how to send the brother’s body back to Guatemala. 

 

We rejoice with you that we are living in this amazing grace and getting to walk with Jesus through all these ups and downs with a great group of people.  Just to think God partnered all of us together to pray, financially support and do this work…so that all these people might get to know and embrace Jesus for all of eternity.  Thanks for doing this with us!

 

To more victories day by day,

 

Chad & Fabiola

Youth Lovingly Exhorts Mother

School is in full swing; the communities of South Central Los Angeles are into a new, yet familiar rhythm.  Summer has come and gone, but was definitely a fruitful season for our church plant.  The believers are maturing and we met a lot of new families seeing numbers of them get integrated into the church. 

We would appreciate your prayer support this fall as we launch two new ministries.  We have been building up to them since last spring, but we have just launched a new youth ministry through our church and a scholastic tutoring program as a means to serve the community and build more relationships in the community.  We are perfectly sandwiched between a public elementary and high school.  Our youth group’s focus is discipleship and training the youth to take leadership and initiative to minister to their peers and their families.

There is a mother that we have known since we moved here that has come out to a few events, but has not yet given her life to Jesus.  She is a single mother of four.  One of her children has special needs.  She often feels overwhelmed.  One of her sons, Ricky (name changed), gave his life to Jesus through our ministry and was later baptized.  At church we have talked with him about how he is one of the leaders who will help take the youth ministry to the next level.  We have also been training the church in how to give words of encouragement and life to one another. 

The other day a group of us from the church were doing some work projects to fix up the building where we hold the youth ministry and tutoring program (along with our music ministries and office space) and Ricky’s family came out to participate in the BBQ we had afterwards.  After eating, Fabiola challenged Ricky to listen to God and see what He might want to say to his mom.  This is what the 14-year old Ricky shared with his mother:

“Mama, God thinks that you are a strong women and He is proud of you for raising four children.  He thinks you are intelligent and wise.”  After that he asked, “Mama, can I ask you a question?  But I want you to promise to answer honestly.”  “Do you want to go to the Christian church?”  The mother responded positively and Ricky continued, “Then why won’t you come?” (Ricky comes to church activities two to four times a week – always alone.)

Ricky then prayed, “God, thank you for my mama.  Help her to come to church so that she can know Christ and be saved.  Help her.  Thank you God, because without her I would have never found how to walk in your ways.”  As you can imagine, both Ricky and his mother were crying at the end of this beautiful exchange.  She also came out to church the following day with her two youngest children and a beaming Ricky. 

We are here to see families and individuals restored through Christ.  Thank you for praying over our lives and the lives of youth like Ricky and his family.  Together we are making an impact and seeing more and more people enter the Kingdom of God.

Restoring broken lives through Christ,

Chad & Fabiola