90706

As I sat in front of my laptop screen typing away the numbers "90706" over and over again, His spirit spoke gently to me a thought. "Oh how he must truly love his children in this city." An event called "Unite" was held at the Bellflower town center on Tuesday night for 5 weeks in the month of July. I was asked to gather volunteers to run the booths at the event for registration, food, and t-shirts, etc. After the 5 week event, the tall stack of registration cards told me that there was close to 500 people who had attended all throughout the weeks. As I transferred the registration information onto a database on my laptop, I noticed that I rarely found myself typing addresses that were from outside of Bellflower. I'm still not quite sure why that stood out to me, or why it even came as a shock because it was an event as a target mainly to our neighbors in Bellflower. But one thing I know is that it reminded me of a passage in the New Testament when Jesus fed the 5,000 on the mountainside...

Since interning at KCB, I have been privileged to be exposed to God's Kingdom that is powerfully moving in the city of Bellflower. And especially through Unite, I have seen God use several churches to put on an amazing night where neighbors can come hear God's words. Just as a crowd came toward Jesus on the mountainside, I believe that God has brought the hundreds of our Bellflower neighbors to call them to his feet. However, just like Philip's lack of faith as he asked Jesus, "Eight months' wages would not buy enough bread for each one to have a bite," I showed the same lack of faith when I ran into some difficulty of gathering volunteers. The first week, I was worried and stressed that I was not going to have enough help. But of course at the face of my weak faith, God provided just enough volunteers at just the right time. And as the weeks went by, he brought people on board that I didn't even know were coming to help! Even with the food on the first Tuesday of the guest speaker, I was worried the whole night that we might run out of it and we wouldn't be able to feed everyone. To my complete and utter amazement, the pizza ran out as the last couple people strolled past. It couldn't have been more perfect. God called his people, fed everyone, sat them all down in time for the pastor to speak. Talk about a miracle happening right here in the center of Bellflower.

Sitting here and reflecting on the past couple of weeks, I am simply in awe of Him. I am amazed at how powerfully God is moving and how desperately He is pursuing after his people in the 90706. I feel like Philip all the more as I reflect, mistakenly thinking that I must use my own efforts, planning, and coordinating to work for God's Kingdom. How easily I forget that God already has everything in control.

-Madison Hur