Every community has its own
story. Every individual has a unique narrative. As we partner together to share
God’s heart for redeeming broken people amongst the urban poor we hope that you
will be able to ‘walk’ the streets with us and ‘visit’ the homes and get to
‘hear’ these stories. So often we are confronted with negative stories – our
hope is to help people, and entire
communities, rewrite their stories…to the kind of story that has a happy
ending. The kind of story where the protagonist rises from the dead to rescue
the broken hearted and wandering! The kind of story where we aren’t the main
character, but we still play a very important part….
UPDATES
Women’s Breakfast
A team of women from our
church organized a special breakfast for the women. There was a powerful time
in the Word of God and fellowship. Women were able to open up about past hurts
that they have been carrying and receive prayer, counsel and the support of other
women.
South Park Opens Field
This
is worth reporting because it is a big deal for our community. A new synthetic
soccer field was just installed and opened up and it is right across the street
from our church. Now even more people pass by our church and come – we
anticipate different types of outreach and service opportunities in the near
future.
VBS
The
week leading up to Easter as the children in the community are on Spring Break
we have a yearly tradition to go out and hold a Vacation Bible Study (VBS) for
the community. This year we had around 100 people participate. We are so
grateful for a high school group that volunteers along with our church to help
make this possible. Our relationship with the community continues to improve as
we invest in children, families and in meeting real needs.
"LA was honestly
not at all what I had anticipated. It was far from the beautiful sunshine
portrayed from Hollywood. It was dark and dreary, hopeless and consuming.
Walking through the week, there were definitely struggles I'd never forget….”
"Today was our
last day in LA and I realized how much I was going to miss the kids at the VBS.
Each of the kids has taught me something priceless and I learned so much from
watching them interact. By holding our VBS, we brought the Spanish side of the
park and the Black side of the park together. By watching them play soccer,
sing songs, and draw on my face together, I learned so much about love and my
faith…."
“I think the thing
that surprised me the most was how much culture shock I experienced. I walked
into a completely different world that existed in my own backyard. Even down to
the way people spoke. I thought I knew LA like the back of my hand but the
second I got here, I saw new places and people I hadn't known ever existed….Even
one of my favorite places in the world, I knew so little about it.”
“I made it my goal to
try to get to know at least one kid. I ended up sitting next to this girl named
Niyeli.
We started off with
small talk questions like:
"What do you like
to do for fun?" (Basketball) or
"What's your
favorite subject in school?" (Math).
Super basic questions,
but as I kept talking with her, the answers got deeper. She got more into the
conversation. (And so did I) At some point, I asked her, "What else do you
like doing at school? Do you hang out with your friends a lot?"...She shook
her head, "I don't got no friends."
I didn't really know
how to respond to this, I just held my urge to yell "I'LL BE YOUR
FRIEND!!!" because I knew it would be impossible to keep in contact with
her after this week.
I asked her if she'd
come back tomorrow to VBS….she said, "Yah! I'm always in this park! Ya
know, ima grow up in this park. This is my place."
Work Projects
With
the help of expertise from our church and two groups of volunteers we have been
able to remodel our office (that use to be a storage room) with a new window,
flooring, paint and shelving. We also redid the flooring in one bathroom where
there was termite damage, built a fence, installed a new closet, painted the
youth room and created a new solution for storage. Phew! The church is looking better than ever…and after each other
of these projects becomes more and more useful to be able to serve even more
people.
Good Friday Service and Youth Group Unity
Our
Good Friday service was special because we had people from the community and
VBS that came out, had some of the youth from another church join us and just
had a sweet time reflecting on what Christ has done for us. One of our past
youth leaders returned with a group of teens from the church where he is
currently serving for a mission’s trip experience. During the week, we did
outreach together in the park (focused on the teens and tweens) and then went
over to the homes of one of the families from our church for dinner, fellowship
and a time of worship.
Eater Service
The
highlight of our Easter service was that 7 people were baptized. The baptisms
are exciting in themselves, but it was the powerful words of encouragement,
exhortation and prayers offered by our church over each individual that really
impacted us the most. Also, these were not people that we led to the Lord
directly, but friends and family that had been invited by people from our
church that we had led to the Lord – in other words we were celebrating the
baptisms of our spiritual grandchildren….pretty exciting!
Conference: Activating and Releasing Believers
We are so thankful for our good friends that came and spent
a week with us and spurred us on through practical service projects, deep
fellowship and a conference that tops, I think, all conferences that we have
ever had. The teaching was practical and powerful…and then we released people
to pray and share. It is common for people to not want to pray or share in
front of others…but that changed! By the end of the conference people were
praying for one another, laying down burdens and sharing with stories of how God
spoke to them and was healing their hurts and pains.
Pulse:
Church Planting and Leadership Conference
Chad
was invited to teach a workshop at World Impact’s church planting and
leadership conference, Pulse. The focus of the conference is to equip and
empower urban leaders and those wanting to make a deeper impact in urban
ministry. Chad shared strategies, principles and vision for church planting in
the city. It was exciting being able
to hand off some of that information and inspiration with the hopes to see more
and more people impact their cities for Christ.
Outreach: Providing a Meal and Clothes
Creating a time and place to bring people together and
meeting needs…that was what one of our latest outreaches was all about. We
thank our friends for bringing food and other donations of clothes and toys
that we can distribute to people in this community. We shared a meal together
which allowed for families to sit down with their guests and share the gospel
and a bit of life with them.
Mother’s Day “Pampering” Event
We showered love and appreciation on the women for mother’s
day. We are so grateful for the volunteers that came out and helped organize
this event – all amazing people! There was a lot of great conversation and many
first time guests. The children were cared for and having a blast playing games
and making special Mother’s Day crafts and cards. Fabiola spoke to the women
about the need and beauty of being vulnerable and then they had manicures and
pedicures and a time for socializing and tea. Later they had a catered lunch
and a special dessert. Each lady left
with a gift bag of goodies and words of affirmation spoken over them.
Three generations.
Mother and daughters photo
Small Group Ministry
We
have seen some great fruit coming out of the small group ministry at our
church. Not only are new leaders being trained up and empowered to teach and
lead others, but new people are coming to know the Lord.
Coming up:
Church
camping trip May 20-21
New
members presented May 29
Quinceaños
celebration (15th birthday) June 4
Rebecca’s
5th grade culmination June 8
Evangel
Church Planting School June 9-11
Youth
leadership transition June 17
Father’s
Day celebration/service June 19
Children’s
church teacher training June 25
Summer
camps begin June 26
Wedding
at our church July 23
Please
Pray with Us…
1. Stamina and Family Time.
Pray for stamina
for our family and good family time outside of the ministry.
We are praying about where and how to get some
administrative help for the church/ministry to allow us to continue pursuing
the training-up and mentoring of leaders that are moving into bigger
responsibilities and roles.
2. Healthy/Successful Youth Leaders
Transition.
Pray that the
upcoming transition in our youth ministry leadership will go well.
The couple that has been serving as our youth leaders
are moving to another city. A couple in our church has the heart and feels
called to take the baton and run with it, but it will require some good
coaching and mentoring on our part as they have never led a ministry
before.
3. Growth.
Pray with us
about the growth and expansion of the church.
Over the last 2 months we have seen an increase in new
families attending our services! Pray with us that we could help them
assimilate into the life of the church and do a good job teaching and training
them. We continue to look and pray for opportunities to move towards another
church plant.
God does the work, but He
loves to use each one of us in the process.
Thank you for partnering
with us to help rewrite the stories of countless individuals.
Chad, Fabiola,
Rebecca, Justice and Beniah
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