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 4th!
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.
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,
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