It’s not important who does the planting, or who does the watering. What’s important is that God makes the seed grow.– 1 Cor 3:7

He was one of the first people we met when we moved to our neighborhood. Visibly strung out, waiting for customers on the loop late at night, yet full of charisma with a broad smile and only barely holding it together – we liked him immediately. For the first few months we lived here we saw Tia often, always on the loop. One time we offered Tia some home-made chocolate chip cookies and he gobbled them down one after another, repeating enthusiastically about how much he loved chocolate and please, please could have another… and another… and another?

A few years went by. We’d very occasionally run into Tia during the daytime or in other places around the neighborhood. Sometimes he had a place to stay, or normal work, sometimes he didn’t, but we were always delighted to see each other. Unlike so many that are involved in street life, he continually seemed to be getting healthier and more lucid.

It had been about six months since we’d last seen him and one afternoon in February Kashmira felt like God brought Tia sharply to her mind. She prayed a simple prayer for him and wondered where he was. Four days later Kashmira and Elian were riding the free #2 bus home from the city and Tia got on just a few blocks before she was getting off. “Tia!” she called out, “I haven’t seen you in so long! It’s so good to see you are well!” He smiled and was eager to meet our little son.

Just a few days later our whole family was again on the free #2 bus, this time on our way out of the neighborhood at 8:35am, headed to church. After we got ourselves and our stroller settled on the bus we were surprised and delighted when Tia came up and greeted us. “Where are you going,” we asked, thinking that it was pretty early on a Sunday for Tia to be out and about. “Oh, I’m going to church with some friends,” Did he just say he was going to church??? Sure enough, yes, he was, along with three other friends from the streets – one of whom was a young man who has been a Believer for several years and had enthusiastically collected this group to join him and visit a foreign friend’s bi-lingual church that Sunday. We asked if we could come too, quickly adjusting our expectations for the day, delighted that our neighbors from the streets were the ones taking us to church.

Izayla on a (different) Bus with Dad

When we exited the bus after another hour and a bit of barreling through traffic, our “leader”, the young Thai believer, revealed that he wasn’t exactly certain where the church met, so could he borrow Iven’s phone to call the foreign dude that had invited him to come to church that day? Turns out that we were not only a bit confused about where to meet but also when – church wasn’t going to start until 2:00pm! We asked our leader what he thought we should do and he said let’s go to his friends place, so the 8 of us found ourselves riding free busses back and forth across the city, stopping to play in a park together (Jesus cares for our little ones too!) and eventually crashing the apartment of this foreign dude whom most of us had never met, Justin, who had invited the Thai believer (and by proxy his friends) to join him at church.

As an aside, when we entered the apartment of the “foreign dude” we simultaneously realized that he was the same Justin who had contacted us wondering about volunteering with Rak Teh more than a year ago and whom we had corresponded with regularly leading up to his move to Thailand. Though it hadn’t worked out for him to officially volunteer with us, or even meet us, God was using him in a roundabout way to partner with us in loving our neighbors… and none of us had any idea about it!

Finally arriving at the church, which was in both Thai and English, we were delighted to see Christ’s body surround and embrace our friends, despite the fairly obvious signs that they were not classic “insiders”, including the fact that nearly all four of them slept through most of the service. As the tag-alongs, rather than the initiators, we were delighted that these friends had a safe place to sleep for a little while, where they would not be harassed or humiliated.

During the course of our adventure Iven had passed around a simple Japanese-style comic book that tells a collection of stories from Jesus’ life. Tia was looking at it at one point and Kashmira asked what he thought. “Its interesting,” he answered thoughtfully, “I’ve read it already. Some of your friends gave it to me last month.” “Our friends? Who are you talking about?” It turns out that an international church we partner with here in Bangkok that comes to our neighborhood and gives out food to our homeless neighbors had met Tia recently, given him a meal, talked with him some, and given him the comic. Though no one had said anything about us, he knew they were our friends, even though he had never seen them with us.

A few weeks later Iven was able to connect with Tia again and to give him a more complete Gospel story in comic book form, which he was really excited about receiving. He told Iven he has since been back to that church twice (which via the free #2 bus is a 2.5 hour journey each way!), is considering becoming a Christian, and will maybe start asking someone from that church to help him grow in faith. They were going to give him clothes and he was amazed at how friendly and welcoming everyone was.

Not long after that our teammate Pat met Tia for the first time while she was leading a team of high school students from Korea to give out food in the neighborhood. He saw the girls praying for someone and approached them with the question, “Are you guys Christians? I’m a Christian too.” Pat didn’t realize until later that this was our friend we had been praying for and known for such a long time – but eventually he pulled our business card out of his  pocket and asked Pat if she happened to know us. She smiled and said, that yes, she actually did.

Tia is beginning a journey of faith in which at least 5 different groups have each had a role in planting or watering seeds in his life. We trust God to be faithful to complete that good work He is doing in Tia’s heart. Please join us as we continue to pray for Tia, and as we give God glory for making the seeds grow!

“Having the baby now…No time to get to the hospital…At the tea shop,” hollered the “Grandma” as she ran up the stairs past Iven to retrieve something from her room, looking understandably extremely anxious. We don’t know these neighbors well but have been trying to connect more, especially with the three younger children in their family of five – quickly becoming six – living in the tiny apartment that shares a wall with ours. The oldest of the kids who lives at home was nine months pregnant with her second baby and we had been greeting them with “Has the baby come yet?” for weeks already.

I took our own little baby Elian across the street to the sidewalk tea shop where the girl was laboring, in a lawn chair, just behind the tea cart. Her mom was hurriedly pacing back and forth on the street and people were yelling to get the girl in a taxi, while others hollered back, “there’s no time!”

I joined the small crowd of women gathered around her, trying not to be in the way, quietly praying and wondering if there was something I could do to help. One of my neighbors and I joked together about how little Elian had come to help encourage the baby that was getting ready to greet the world.

the tea shop across from our house

After just a few minutes a motorcycle pulled up with two men on it. Their police radios and first aid bag told me that they were some sort of official “first responders”. We had read a newspaper article recently (actually, on Elian’s due date) about how in Bangkok there is a special division of policemen on motorcycles that are trained and dispatched to deliver babies for women stuck in traffic. The guy they highlighted had just delivered his 42nd baby stuck in traffic.

My neighbor, however, didn’t even have time to start fighting the traffic to the hospital – less than a minute after the official looking guys arrived the girl started shrieking in a manner which told all of us that have given birth before that the baby was coming NOW. Most people started shrieking back and the men I had expected to come take control of the situation passed out two pairs of rubber gloves, said repeatedly, “better for the women to do it” and turned to walk the other way.

The woman who runs the tea cart looked at me and asked in Thai, “Tam Pben Mai? (Can you do it/Do you know how?)” I totally thought she was joking so I half laughed and responded with, “I don’t know how, but I can pray!!” She and one other girl I don’t know put on the gloves and several of us helped pull off the shorts and underwear of the laboring women, from beneath a sarong that was draped over her lap.

The girl’s shrieking made it clear that the baby’s arrival was quite eminent, and though I am sure everyone else there also recognized that nobody did anything. Finally the younger girl with gloves picked up the sarong and sure enough revealed the head of a baby that had already emerged between his mother’s legs. She timidly put her gloved hand under the baby’s head and looked at me with terror, clearly totally overwhelmed. I thought, “this is ridiculous…someone needs to step in.” I turned to a neighbor and asked her to hold Elian, reached my hand out to motion for the tea shop lady’s gloves (who gleefully pulled them off and worked to get them onto my hands instead) and reached down to help guide the baby all the way out of his mama, and into this world.

Yes, I was totally overwhelmed myself. Yes, it was very surreal, and yes I was shaking pretty badly. Not to mention my usually pretty OK Thai abilities were completely gone and I couldn’t say ANYTHING. As I held this brand new baby in my hands and wondered what would happen next I suddenly woke up and realized how completely unresponsive he was. Unlike Elian, who came out with a healthy holler just six weeks earlier, this baby boy was blue and limp and unresponsive.

So, I started praying, “Jesus, help this baby live. Help this baby breathe. Come on, baby.” Within 30 seconds an ambulance arrived with real EMTs. They gathered around and brought sterile cloths, a suction bulb and equipment to cut the umbilical cord. Less than a minute after the birth, while still praying, I finally began to feel a raspy breath and a heartbeat from the little guy and tried to tell his mama not to be afraid, that I could feel the heart beat and he was breathing. I kept praying and kept my hand on his chest while the EMT people did the medical stuff. His blue skin started turning pink and soon he let out a quiet little squeaky cry – which brought a very audible group exhalation from the 40 or so people who had gathered around us by then. After the cord was cut, I helped move the baby to a table prepared for him and then the coffee shop lady broke through my “crisis haze” and asked, “Where is your baby?” “Huh…my baby…I have a baby…where is my baby?” I thought and started scanning the crowd. I knew I handed him to someone I know but couldn’t for the life of me remember who. It was that moment that Iven called and asked what was happening, “Everything is OK – I caught the baby, I lost ours, but don’t worry, I’ll find him.” “Huh?! You caught the baby? What?”

I found Elian across the street, peacefully sleeping in a neighbor’s arms, encircled by a small group of women who were quick to tell me, “You were brave. None of us were brave.”

My landlord told me a few days later how surprised she was to hear the news on the street that Izayla’s mom delivered a baby at the tea shop and that people have been stopping by to ask her if the foreigner that lives in her building is a nurse (I’m not!). I debriefed the experience with her and she explained that for the most part Thais are more afraid of doing something wrong than of not doing something – everyone was scared they would harm more than help so nobody was really willing to do anything that might be helpful.

It makes for quite a story, and it seems we are now intimately involved in the lives of this family whether they like it or not. We hope for good things to come of it, and I do feel so honored to have been part of this birth on our street. We talk a lot about how life happens “on the street” in our city and neighborhood, but this experience takes it to a whole new level!

I can’t possibly express to you what amazing evangelists our children are. They are completely disarming to the roughest of characters. I can approach people I would naturally be afraid of and pull the cover off of our baby’s face as he peacefully sleeps in his front pack and invariably watch hardened faces warm and smile and want to talk. It’s truly amazing how God has spoken and ordained our kids for this work – to them it is just play, and our home. As a family it is true that our work time is less “efficient” than it was before we had little people – it’s hard to get anything administrative (like keeping our inbox from exploding, staying on top of our finances, and for that matter writing newsletters) ever done, and team meetings and prayer time are often quite a bit noisier than is ideal. That said, in our stated most important of ministry goals – loving God and loving neighbor – our children’s presence truly serves to make us so much more effective than we could ever be without them.

As we cross this five-year anniversary of being here in Thailand we think back to nearly three years ago when God first so clearly spoke to us about wanting to give us children. Our initial oh-so-wise response to God was, “No, you don’t understand – You called us here to start a ministry. We can’t do that with kids. It just wouldn’t work.” Now I can look back and see how the presence of our children has solidified our role in the community and though God has redirected our focus some since we initially came, this current vision of loving “the least of these” here in our neighborhood is such a perfect pairing with our strengths and gifts as a family. Our children are just as called to this ministry as we are and any sort of an “inheritance” we may receive in heaven will be theirs as well.

So now that we have TWO adorable little people in our family, we have double the fun to share in photos! Here’s Sept, Oct and Nov picture albums:

2011-09 Two Kids!!!

2011-10 Two Kids!!

2011-11 Two Kids!!

Before we had kids we would spend usually two nights a week out on “the loop”, the name we have given to the 2-block figure-eight area that free-lancing young men wait for customers late at night. Since Izayla was born close to two years ago God has shifted our focus from the men specifically to our local neighborhood as a community, which of course includes the young men involved in prostitution but also women and our homeless neighbors. As time has gone by our daughter has needed more of a schedule and bedtime routine and now with two kids it is incredibly difficult for us to take any “late night shifts” like we used to on a regular basis. Going out to work at 10 pm with little people that are usually heading to bed by 8 o’clock just doesn’t work out so well. All of that to say, our late-night work life has been mostly in hibernation for the past year. Sometimes we feel troubled by this and at the same time we know it is a reality we have to face and limitations we need to be willing to work with. We have confidence that those streets and the men that are out on them late at night are part of our calling and inheritance here, but during this season we need to focus our energies mostly on other parts of our community. That said, I have a strong impression from the Lord that any little bit of time that we are able to squeeze in some time on the Loop is a sweet offering to the Lord and in a funny way our personal parents-of-young-children widow’s mite.

Last week one of our teammates was able to come over and sit with Izayla after she was asleep, giving us an opportunity to take Elian out in a front pack (he’s still entirely portable and for that matter never knew he left his bed or was out at all, wonderful sleeper that he is…sometimes…) for his first Loop outreach shift.

We started out on the circle and both felt very quiet and at peace. It was one of those evenings where we could really feel God’s presence with us. I love late night outreach – we both really do. No one is out on the streets except us, men waiting for customers, and the occasional teenage gangsters on motorcycles looking to make trouble. The view really is stunning, circumnavigating the Grand Palace.

There were lots of guys out on the first section, but nobody seemed interested in engaging, which was just fine with us, we’ve learned by now that it isn’t about how many conversations you have but about having the right conversations at the right times. Walking along, quietly praying and humming a worship song we were startled to hear a clear voice call from the shadows in English, “Hey, where have you guys been?”

It was a young man we first met probably almost three years ago and immediately recognized. But his shout out to us was completely bizarre for several reasons. First of all it was in English – virtually all of our conversations on the streets are in Thai and we don’t remember this man ever revealing he was fluent in and comfortable with English. Even more bizarre, though, was his apparent complete shift in posture towards us.

A little history – the first time we talked with this man he was somewhat forthcoming, sharing that he was a college student at a nearby university and a little about his life. After that we saw him most nights we were out, over the course of the last 3 years, and pretty much every night he was completely cold and closed with us – would nod his head, but wouldn’t even return our greetings. I think we kind of weirded him out, and the truth is we are pretty weird. I can say with confidence that we are still the only foreign couple who walk these streets late at night, talking and praying with young men who are “working”.

Anyhow, we greeted him joyfully, introduced Elian (who was strapped to Iven’s chest), and caught up on each of our lives a bit. After a few minutes of friendly conversation he motioned to a waiting car and explained he had a customer. As he was turning to leave, Iven called out, “Hey, before you go, I want to tell you that the God who made the world made you and He loves you so much and is so delighted with you no matter what.” He paused and considered that. “Really?” “Yes, its true.” The man thanked us and got into the waiting car with some other guys.

Iven and I sat there quietly and then Iven explained to me that as we were heading out that night God had really put that particular guy on his heart and he had been praying for him all evening. Before we saw him God had given Iven that particular phrase to pass on to him. It was a beautiful moment, and we both felt Jesus so near to us on that street that night, and in the conversation and prayers. It is such a privilege to be part of His body here on these streets.

Everyone knows us (especially our daughter Izayla Talae) and is watching us…and we have many roles, we are known as the foreigners who live on the third floor above the Isaan food shop, as the parents of “little sister” Talae, as people who pray and seek to do good deeds among our neighbors, and as friends of crazy people.

That last one is probably our favorite role in the community. Very often we will be engaged in conversation with one of our neighbors – usually homeless and also often looking for customers, sometimes physically or mentally disabled, or both, and someone we don’t really know will approach us and try to get in between us and the woman or man we are talking with to whisper in broken English, “She’s crazy. You shouldn’t talk with her.” We invariably respond politely, “Yes, she is our friend. We have known her a long time”, at which point they look at us like we ourselves are crazy and walk away shaking their head.

Izayla with some deaf friends from the streets!

Just this morning I (Kashmira) was out with the kids chatting with a man who was not from the neighborhood who was asking about our children while Izayla was calling “mama! Mama!” and pulling on me to come join her to say hello to a homeless man with a head injury whom we have known for years. The “normal” man she was talking with tried to helpfully explain that that man was a beggar and I said, “yes, he’s our friend. She wants to go say hello to him.” He repeated that the man was a beggar and looked confused by my response, all while Izayla pulled me to the side of our homeless friend, proceeded to offer him a piece of treasured ice from her cup and sat down next to him on the street.

Meanwhile another older homeless man who we don’t know asked permission to take a picture of Izayla and pulled out an old style (haven’t seen one of these in years) regular film camera, pulled her onto his lap and the two of them gave big broad smiles to my  “click” of the camera.

We are delighted to announce the birth of our son, Elian Sila, born Wednesday night, August 24, 2011 at 11:12 PM.

Labor and birth were uneventful in the best of ways – 7 hours long, delivered naturally and drug-free in a birthing pool. In between contractions Kashmira even heard herself saying, “I’m having fun”, which is just plain weird, but we are grateful. Arriving 10 days past his due date, our little guy was 3.42 kilos / 7.5 lbs and 51 cm / 20 in. (His big sister was 9 days late and 3.4 kilos).

A few weeks before discovering that we were pregnant Kashmira woke up in the middle of the night with the name Elian (เอลเลียน– eh-lee-an) in her head, wondering, “Could I be pregnant with a little boy?”  Elian is a Hebrew name, meaning “the Lord is my God.” Sila (ศิลา-sea-laa) is a Thai name, meaning “Rock”.

A great big thank you goes out to our team mates Pat and Sam Sarvis for giving Izayla the time of her life while mom and dad were busy at the hospital – she had so much fun, didn’t really want to come home!

We’re having a great time getting to know our newest little family member, and watching a whole new side of Izayla emerge as she explores what it means to be a big sister. She is especially excited to tell us that he has eyes, to softly pet his head like a dog, and each time she wakes up from a nap she eagerly asks for “momma, daddy and baby” so we’re guessing that she’s realized he’s a part of the family already!

Thank you so much for your friendship, prayers and support on this most delightful journey!

All grace and peace,
Iven, Kashmira, Izayla and Elian

“…Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” –Matthew 25:40

“Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.’” –Matthew 19:14

I’ve been finding myself drawn towards and praying for the disabled people in our community more and more lately. We just returned from six weeks in America a few days ago and have been venturing out, as our jet lag allows, reconnecting with people we know and missed.

On our first full afternoon back the three of us went out to a particularly seedy little street in our neighborhood where we have several friends. I saw a woman we know, “Jack”, who is a few years younger than me and is disabled – unable to speak and with compromised motor functions. She lives on that corner with her mom in a makeshift “squat” (temporary tiny street home) on the sidewalk. I have seen her mother yelling at her abusively and am pretty certain she is being “rented out” by her mom as well. I walked through the small group of hustling women clustered nearby her to say hello and greet her by name, which brought forth one of her beautiful smiles. Immediately a woman I don’t know stepped in front of me very distressed and tried to explain in English that this girl can’t speak and doesn’t understand and essentially that I shouldn’t waste my time. I responded in Thai that we are friends and I have known her for a long time now. Before I could return my attention to Jack, a drunk Thai man standing there broke in, also in halting English, to proposition me, pointing towards the slum/brothel we were standing in front of. Keep in mind I was holding my toddler, have a very visibly pregnant belly and my husband was standing behind me. I politely declined and went back to trying to communicate with Jack, which was pretty impossible at this point. The man turned to Iven to ask him if he was interested in any of the ladies there. As we walked away we both were feeling absolutely gross; Iven summed up the essence of our sadness, “We were trying to say hello to our friend Jack, and we were essentially told that she wasn’t even human and that hurts, as it should.”

Yesterday afternoon Izayla and I were out together and bumped in to a man I would like to say we know well, given his limitations. It is true I don’t know his name and he doesn’t know ours, but we are friends. He is deaf and fairly severely physically disabled, rendering his limbs and face contorted enough that though he is able to walk with a severe limp, it is impossible to ignore his deformities and no one would ever describe him as a classically “attractive” person. He saw us walking up and rushed over with a giant smile on his grossly twisted face. I am unable to communicate to him why it has been so long since he saw us or where we went, but we do as best we can with smiles and rudimentary hand gestures. He is our friend, we are his, and he knows it.

I pray for these friends often, and I woke up early this morning with Jack heavy on my heart. Neighbors like these have so little value or identity ascribed to them – so little hope of life becoming better. I know that many disabled people in the States experience similar stigmatization and prejudice, but I think it is all the much more so here on our streets, in this Buddhist context where people believe you very much deserve whatever difficulties you were dealt.

It has been a number of years since I have read anything by Henri Nouwen, but I was reflecting this morning on his depth of insight into the Kingdom of God, and intimacy with Jesus. He spent years of his life living in community with disabled adults. I expect there were probably critics who said he was wasting his brilliant theological mind and gifts of communication by spending so much of his time with disabled people who had such limited abilities in the traditional sense. I know God didn’t see it that way.

What does hope look for for these neighbors of ours? For the dozens of homeless deaf people in our community, so many of whom were thrown out by their parents and never received an education or even learned sign language? Though theoretically disabled people in Thailand are entitled to truly free medical care and a meager-but-something $15 a month to live on, so many of them were never registered at birth (thus not being able to prove they are Thai citizens) or have their registrations in some other province and are unable to receive any benefits.

It is pretty hopeless in the worldly sense. We believe God can and may very well choose to heal our neighbors from physical and mental disabilities, and we continuously pray that He does so. Even withstanding that, though, I do think that Scripture tells us clearly that there are special gifts given to those who are thrown away by their communities. Jesus speaks boldly about his identifying personally with people who have no worldly value. Their physical lives are so much more painful and sorrowful than was God’s original desire and intention when He created them, but I think they are privy to an intimacy and sweetness with Jesus that you and I “normal” people will never know. I see the twisted but unquenchable smile of the man we greeted yesterday and I wonder what love letters Jesus has read to him in his dreams. I greet Jack on the street as she is surrounded by other women available for “sale”, am disgusted by the fact that she truly has no ability to get out of that situation, and I know that Jesus is so very near to her in that place of pain and deep injustice. I trust our good God to be faithful in their lives even more than in my own family, but I don’t know that any of us will ever be able to see that on this side of heaven.

We just returned from a lovely six weeks in America. Thanks to our little Izayla we ended up having a much slower pace this time around than we often have experienced on previous visits. Time with family, friends, churches and supporters was delightful and never long enough. A first for us was that both Iven and Kashmira made the time to sneak away on personal retreats while there, time that was truly well spent. A big thank you to everyone who hosted us, prayed for us, fed us, turned up for events, or simply loves us – it was a joy reconnecting with so many of you. Click on the below slide-show to see some pictures from our trip Stateside:

From America 2011

Disclaimer: We usually aren’t a big fan of doing things with short-term teams… we prefer long-term relationship based ministry which is pretty much impossible to do with a group of foreigners who don’t speak Thai that are only dropping in for a day or two…  Ok, so that’s our disclaimer.

A few months ago we were contacted by Yonnie from Iris Ministries (birthed out of Heidi and Rolland Baker’s work in Mozambique) about working with a short-term team Iris was bringing to Thailand to work with a number of different ministries, and maybe could they work with us to host a block party in our neighborhood? Iris has a reputation for seeing God show up in very tangible ways as they pray for people to be healed, and we thought it sounded like a pretty neat opportunity.

So, we started asking our neighbors about how to throw a block party here and got hooked up with the Grandfather (Godfather?) of Sanam Luang – a delightful, shady, imp of a man who told us exactly what we needed to do, how much we should pay him to make the food happen, and how many people would actually be interested in God if we threw a party (he said 10% – which it turns out is pretty accurate!)

So… After paying Grandfather for his time and effort and the food (unknowingly he asked for exactly what Iris decided to give), and changing the location, menu, and program from our initial plans (learn to listen to your neighbors Iven and Kashmira!)  approximately 300 people came to our “Block Party” this past Saturday (thanks in part to Grandfather’s deciding to print up his own flyers inviting people to the party). We ran out of food but the 250+ who got to eat said it was delicious. The Iris Ministries team shared some great dramas and led games, Baan Jai Diaow Ministry helped pass out invitations in the neighborhood and were treasured extra hands during the event, and and our wonderful friend P’ Noi brought an inspiring message about The Great Banquet (very appropriate in this context, considering that many of the neighbors who came to the party are homeless people who were gathered around eating together).  Lots of people experienced some physical healing through prayer ministry, and several made professions of faith. About 250 small gifts and invitations to the Monday night gathering were handed out and all around it was a fun time for everyone that participated.

Thank you Yonnie and Iris – we’re so glad we decided to say yes to your team! Y’all rock! And yes, our neighbors did feel loved by you guys, even if you were only here for a little while! Thank you P’ Boy and BJD – couldn’t have done it without you! Thank you P’ Noi – you are amazing! Thank you Grandfather – you throw a great party!

Check out our friend Nok’s write-up on the event, and especially some of his stellar photos.

And perhaps even more exciting… On the following Monday, a core group of about 15 people with another 15 stragglers joined us in one of the only grassy corners of our neighborhood to sit on mats, play a game, hear about God’s Father heart of love for us all, and pray for each other. It was a very sweet and special time and we are hopeful that though it may take on many incarnations yet that this is the beginning of our local church here within our community. In the picture below Sam is sharing with the group:

So, disclaimers aside, we had a heck of a block party – a great time with a short-term team – and new and exciting things are happening in our neighborhood!