Canaan Presbyterian Church -- Local Missions

Over the past two weeks we have had the joy of hosting a group of young adults from Canaan Presbyterian Church here in Bellflower. What a great group of Christians, willing to learn and serve, wanting to be obedient to Jesus and engage thier local community! Chrissy and Eric have done an excellent job of orienting them to Kingdom Causes and giving them practical training in homeless outreach and asset based community development.

I love to see new connections being made and young people committed to blessing Bellflower!

Choices

You never know what you will learn when you decide to sit and listen. Not talk or converse, just listen. I was able to do that a couple weeks ago with someone at the park and it was incredible what I learned. This man shared how he went from being a church going youth leader in love with sports to a drug addicted dad living with constant fear of finding money for his daughter and girlfriend. The most eye-opening thing was that he wasn’t much different than me. We both loved sports, loved youth group, love family and have both faced hard times. So what’s the difference? What made it so this man is in such a different place than me? Choices. We all make choices, big ones, small ones, and even medium-sized ones. When it comes down to it, what will our decision be each and every time we are faced with a decision? Will we continue to go down the road that the world has for us or will we turn to the truth. Choices. What will we decide?

Soccer Started!!!

Praise God! After weeks of overcoming obstacles, we finally started our Eucalyptus Soccer Program! We had a great group of kids ranging from ages 4 to 14. Most of the kids are between 6th & 8th grades. About 5 kids that live across the street from me played with us on Wednesday night. I'd always said hello or smiled to their families, but never had the chance to connect with them until this week. Please continue to pray that God blesses our interactions with the kids and their families. The purpose for this program is to give the kids a safe place to go to do something they love. Our hope is to get to know the parents through these types of programs. We'd love to see more neighbors at our meetings for the street.

Streetfest!

This Thursday was the first Streetfest of the summer. It was a blast! Two of my neighbors came with me. We saw so many people that we recognized. I'd encourage you, if you live in Bellflower, to make Thursday night Streetfests a part of your weekly schedule. What a great time to hang out with neighbors!

'Our Place'

Last week Chrissy took Kristin (her 10 year old neighbor) to Rosewood Church for family night. Kristin had such a blast that she asked Chrissy if she could go to church again the next day! There were no church activities the next day so Chrissy invited her to ‘Our Place’ to hang out and pray with the prayer group that meets every Friday morning. Kristin took her up on the offer and showed up the next morning. While we were at the prayer meeting Kristin shared about what she did the night before and told us that she couldn’t wait to go back. Pat Holwerda (a prayer partner who attends Rosewood Church and lives on Eucalyptus) volunteered to take Kristin to the next family night at Rosewood.
This morning we had our weekly prayer meeting and Pat shared some awesome stories about Kristin and family night. One story that Pat shared made us all realize what an impact ‘Our Place’ is having on the neighbors. While Pat and Kristin where eating dinner at Rosewood a couple they were sitting with asked Kristin how she knew Pat. Kristin answered in a matter of fact way, “From ‘Our Place’”. It was awesome to know that she thought of ‘Our Place’ as a place to hang out and meet new people. It was great to see a connection and know that God is using this resource center to make a difference. We are super excited that Kristin got connected with Rosewood and we are excited to see what God has in store for her life.

Neighbor!

I have a neighbor that lives in the apartments next door. He is always there. Always! If you listen carefully, you can almost always hear him. Some people might be annoyed by his loudness, but I'm comforted by it. He's always home & always watching what's going on our street. When I walk by, he yells "Neighbor!" and I reply "Hi neighbor!" back. That's usually the extent of our conversation, but I'd still consider him a friend.

On Friday mornings during the summer we are working with Pat Holwerda to pass out bread to the neighbors. It's good bread! High quality. But this last week, we had tons of it and all of the people that are good at networking in the neighborhood were not available. Katie and I decided to take a basket to my front yard and pass it out to people walking by. On our way down we ran into Neighbor (I found out his name is Manuel). He was so excited about the bread. He went door to door in his complex to tell people about it. It seemed like everyone that came up to the center the rest of that day was referred by him. What a great connection!

"Bull In The China Shop"

Have you ever played phrase pictionary? I hadn’t either until last week Thursday. We had our fist open house at ‘Our Place’ last Thursday afternoon. I was a little nervous that no one would show up because we didn’t advertise as much as we should have for it. But I was wrong! About five kids showed up at 2:30pm and we played ping-pong, foosball, told stories, ate ice cream, and played pictionary with them. The best part of the afternoon, for me personally, was when Chrissy and I played phrase pictionary with the three neighborhood boys that showed up. Chrissy went first and was going to attempt to draw the phrase “bull in the china shop”. As she started drawing it out we easily guessed the first four words, but guessing the fifth word is when we ran into trouble. The word ‘shop’ is very hard to draw; we guessed things like the mall, various department stores, restaurants, a house, and even a casino. We guessed word after word and could not figure it out! Chrissy finally told us that the last word was shop – “bull in the china shop”. The boys and I looked at each other in confusion, we had never heard that phrase before – no wonder we couldn’t figure it out! We had a great laugh after that one.
I felt a real bond with the boys as we played that game. We were all laughing and working together to figure out the mystery word. We were just hanging out and being ourselves, it was a great way for all of us to get to know each other. I am so amazed at how God provides opportunity after opportunity to form relationships with the neighbors. Chrissy and I are already thinking of phrases for this week’s open house!