Meet Our Summer Interns: Ashley

Hello readers, my name is Ashley Salazar and I am going to tell you about whom I am, what I love, and my exciting plans for this summer. Lets start with who I am and a little about myself. I am a seventeen-year-old girl who was born and raised in Long Beach, California. Growing up was amazing with my big loving family, we were all so close. I attended Valley Christian Schools all my life, and have made such great memories and friends through that community. My freshman year of high school I experienced the loss of my brother Jason. My family and I were very distraught and heartbroken. Although I loss one of my best friends, and it made me weak, but I was able to build a strong relationship with The Lord and I am so grateful for that.

            As a girl there is a lot of things that I am passionate about like shopping, cosmetology, and consistent Netflix movie nights. But, in my sophomore year of high school I experienced this thing that people liked to do in their free time called volunteering. I knew it had something to do with helping people, but I wasn’t entirely sure of what it consisted of. My first time volunteering was at the Long Beach Rescue Mission in downtown. I absolutely fell in love with helping people and I felt like God had called me down to the mission for a reason; to find what I love to do. What I love about volunteering with people and others in my community, is at the end of the day, seeing everything we have accomplished, and most importantly, seeing everyone with a smile on their face.

            Volunteering led me to join a class through my school called Service-Leadership which, in summary, is a class where every Wednesday, groups of students go out into the community and volunteer with different organizations, and that is how I came to know Kingdom Causes Bellflower. I have been volunteering with Kingdom Causes ever since (two years now) and I have developed great relationships with the employees here. I later discovered that they offer summer internship opportunities for high school graduates! I was so excited because I had recently decided that I wanted to go into Social Working and get my degree in it, so I thought this was absolutely God's calling for me to be a part of this organization.  I interviewed, and am thrilled to have been selected as an intern! I am going to be the intern involved with Homeless Outreach and Our Place Housing Solutions. I am so incredibly excited for this summer’s internship and I cannot wait to see what God has to in store for me this summer.

Bellflower lost a very important neighbor...

On May 30, 2015, Bellflower lost a very important neighbor--Charlotte Forrest.  If you knew Charlotte, you would have fond memories of her dancing her heart out at the Bellflower Streetfests every summer, organizing the annual coat drive for Bellflower Unified Schools, and serving with the Lord's Church food pantry, among other things.  What you might not have known is how big of a role Charlotte played in my life as I was deciding what to do after graduating college. In that sense, I guess I consider her a mentor.

The thing about Charlotte is that she was truly a friend of the homeless and of the people most of us choose not to notice. Before I joined the KCB staff in 2006, she used to take me around with her to visit her friends. Sometimes she would bring food, sometimes she wouldn’t… but always she would spend time talking, listening, and praying with each person we would visit. I would do this maybe once a month with Charlotte and feel really good about myself for the “good work” I was doing.  Sometimes I cramped up from patting myself on the back too hard.

But for Charlotte, this was not a once a month volunteer activity--this was her life. Charlotte didn’t need a program or designated time to do outreach. Loving the poor and the stranger was something that oozed out of her being. There was no schedule.

Charlotte befriended and invested in people that many of us would just walk by and not notice. She recognized the value in them, she loved them, she helped them get connected to the resources they needed… and now they are stable families also giving back to the Bellflower community and serving the Lord.

I’ve had a hard time with her loss, if I can be honest. I’m so happy she’s not suffering… and even happier when I imagine her dancing around in heaven like she would every summer at the Bellflower Streetfests. But Bellflower lost a key servant and friend, and for that, I am sad.

To be frank, if more people in our churches and society were more like Charlotte in their willingness to truly befriend the poor and take risks on people, we wouldn’t need organizations like KCB.  I would love to see that happen.

So my challenge, both to myself and to you, is that we pick up where Charlotte left off. That we notice the people in our communities that go unnoticed. That we get out of our comfort zone and challenge our own stereotypes by becoming a friend to a homeless neighbor. That we honor God by keeping his command to love our neighbor as ourselves.

Isaiah 58 says this: “If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday."

Let’s carry on this Godly legacy that Charlotte leaves behind in Bellflower.  It's going to take a lot of us to make up for this loss.

-Chrissy

Meet our Summer Interns: Crystal

 

My name is Crystal Luque, I am nineteen years old, and have been a resident of Bellflower from the time I was five years old. I have grown more invested in my city each year of my life by singing with the Bellflower Unified School District  Elementary Ensemble, leading Bellflower Middle and High School’s activities, and learning more about my community by being apart of the Miss Bellflower 2012 court.

This past year, I was able to study at Hillsong College in Sydney, Australia because of the love and support my city has shown me. So now I want to spend my summer showing Bellflower the same love that encouraged me to make such a big step straight after high school. At the start of my summer just a year ago, I was graduating high school and boarding a plane to a place where I knew no one. Being away from home showed me what home really is. I hope to provide Bellflower with the warmth and acceptance that is needed for more young ones to dream big.

In the future, I hope to become a pastor and plant a church in Hollywood. Every good idea starts with one simple thought. Mine is to love openly, generously, and honestly. There is no better environment to do that than Kingdom Causes.

Meet our Summer Interns: Ryan

Hi there! My name is Ryan Leck. I am one of the summer interns here at Kingdom Causes Bellflower this year. Nine months out of the year I am a student studying accounting at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The other three months, however, I am spending at home in sunny Southern California. I was raised in the Bellflower area, so this place this place is very dear to my heart.

A few things about me: I love all things movie. Whether it’s going to the movie theater, spending my weekend watching Netflix, or watching an old movie for the one-hundredth time, I love it. Favorite movies include but are not limited to: Grand Budapest Hotel, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, and the Star Wars movies (Yes, even episodes I-III). I am very competitive but like to pretend that I’m not. I hate losing. I just don’t show much I hate it when I actually lose. I also love jokes and secretly like good puns. GOOD puns. Not bad ones. Bad puns make everything worse.

This summer at KCB I will mostly be working with Shaun, Jason, and Abbey on the financial matters of Good Soil. However, I am just an intern, so pretty much anyone can tell me what to do and I’ll have to do it. It’ll be interesting, but I am excited to experience the things that God has set up for me in this internship.

14 Lives Could Change

On-going supportive services
provided for all our move-ins!

My husband, Cody, and I are hoping to one day own a home in Bellflower... but have you seen the housing prices in this area lately? They are no joke! We live in one of the most expensive real estate markets in the United States. In fact, Los Angeles County is ranked #10 as the least affordable area to rent or own a home.

But, why am I sharing this with you? Because, unfortunately, it makes our work with our neighbors in need even more complicated.


When someone is ready to get off the streets, even with a steady job (which is a whole different barrier to discuss!!), most housing is still far from their reach. That giant chasm between homelessness and a stable roof over their head is even larger because of our location in Southern California. This causes us to rely upon special affordable housing programs in order to get our neighbors permanently housed. As imperfect as they are, subsidy programs like Section 8 and Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (VASH) often become our neighbors only tool for finding safe and stable housing.

At KCB/OPHS one of the many things we do in partnership with the local church community is working with neighbors who have been homeless for a year or more in order to help them track down resources to become housed. It's no small feat! When a homeless neighbor does get a voucher, we rejoice... and then we sort of panic. We panic because sometimes it feels next to impossible to find landlords willing to accept a tenant with Section 8 or VASH. I don't know how many times we've worked for years with a neighbor to finally line up a voucher only to have it expire because no one will rent to them. Frankly, it's heart-breaking.


We are part of a new system (we call it the Match.com of housing) that is now slowly connecting some of our most vulnerable homeless neighbors, many of whom you might know from a Saturday morning breakfast, with vouchers. Right now, we have 14 homeless neighbors, including a few families, and 3 veterans, with vouchers. More vouchers will likely be coming through in the next couple of weeks. Please pray that we find landlords in the next week or two willing to rent to our 14 friends!


The supportive services provided by KCB/OPHS do not end once our homeless neighbors are housed. In fact, our staff and volunteers provide on-going case management designed to keep our neighbors housed, paying bills on-time, and ultimately giving back to their community. Basically, we won't leave the landlords hanging!


If you know of any open apartments or have any connections to property managers willing to accept Section 8, please contact Becky, Kim, or Julie at 562-804-2189.