Send me on my Way.

Well ladies and gentlemen, here I am sitting on a Sunday morning waiting for the car to show up to send us home. It feels surreal that we have reached this point in the trip....the conclusion. Let me start by thanking everyone out there who has prayed for or kept up with the blog, especially our families who allowed us to experience God in L.A. this summer. Its late here and most of the people we know we have made our goodbyes with. Tears of sadness and joy have been shed tonight. My heart breaks for this area, opportunity is not a hard thing to find in these areas, our main issue for all of us concerning our ministry was time. Although we are ready to leave and get back home, parts of us want to stay and see through the relationships we have forged. A bittersweet feeling is perpetually going through me now. If you have followed what we have done this summer it is my prayer that you have been challenged. Challenged in ways that will cause you to put yourself on the line for the gospel. In coming to LA i have learned much, one of the biggest things being the urgency of the message. Sitting back and being comfortable in our faith is not what God has called us to do. When we pass on, there is no excuse I can think of explaining why I lived my life on the sidelines when God called us into the game now. I hope you are challenged yourself to try this wherever you are, it isn't necessary even to leave your neighborhood, apartment complex, or dorm to be on a mission trip. Love people, if we have all the knowledge in the world but not love, we have nothing. If we can do the greatest miracles but do not have love, we are nothing (dont know the reference). Love for the day of our salvation is nearer today than it was yesterday, the harvest is ready.

Some last prayer request that i ask you to keep in your prayers for as long as possible....

Jeff- Josh had a final meeting with him and Bob one of the NAMB people came, they had a great conversation and Bob and Jeff are planning to meet again to talk about Christ! Hallelujah :D

Tony-We gave him a Chinese bible and an english Bible, the team made a group effort to highlight important passages and random quotes that Tony would appreciate, we also wrote him a letter, he was deeply touched by the gift and will be reading that, ask that God will open his heart and mind, we also are going to try to connect him to a Chinese church planter out here

Peter-Pretty much same situation as Tony, it was awesome to give him the bible and see his reaction to it, he was soo deeply touched by it. He told us how much he was going to miss us and told us that it is people like us who will make this world better.

Pray for the association out here, they have some amazing Christ centered people and they need prayer always

Pray for the area...

Pray that our team can learn from this trip and that God will guide us and speak to us about this trip even when we are home

Pray for our safe travel back home

If you have time, ask us what happened in LA, you may be called to this awesome place yourself

Grace and Peace be to you

Today started out earlier then usual. We had a meeting in Pasadena at 9:00 am and we were told to expect heavy traffic (its LA). We planned to be in the car at 7:28 am and not to expect everyone to be in good moods. Surprisingly we did not snap at each other and survived the drive to Pasadena as we slowly woke up to embrace the day!

Our meeting was with a member of the Mosaic church, Nathan. He is a strengths finder coach for gallup. We all took the strength finder test before we arrived to find out our top five strengths (talents). Nathan talked about how often we focus on our weaknesses rather then our strengths and try to improve at what we are not good at rather then excel at what we are good at. We work hardest and succeed more often when we use our strengths. He referred to our top five strengths as talents because a strength is knowledge plus skills plus talents. There are 34 talent themes and Nathan discussed them all with us. He showed us how important each individuals talents are to the team because we can't all be talented in the same areas. Each person's different talents bring something different to the group which helps it to be effective. In our group it was interesting to see each others talent themes and how they played out in our daily lives. It also helps you understand how each person in the group operates and how the other members can help them use their strengths better. I think it is awesome that God gave us certain unique strengths for his purpose. I enjoy to learn about people and they way they are so this was very interesting to me. We eat lunch with Nathan and Jonathan Stockstill at a place called Zankou's Chicken which had Lebanese food (which made Luke very happy).

After a great morning we decided we needed some chill out time so we came back to the church and had a little nap time or relax time! Its funny how you do not appreciate naps when you are a kid and everyone always tells you, "You just wait one day you are going to wish you could take a nap." True Story. After nap time, Bruce, Josh, and I went to a Dodgers game!!! Thomas, Luke, and Storm stayed at the church had some relax time and an amazing Lupita dinner. I think they even had a slurpy adventure down to 7-11 but the machine was broke (as Storm would say "sad day"). Overall a pretty great day!

So about the Dodgers game... it was awesome! This was Josh's first MLB game and it had been quite a few years since Bruce and I had been to a game... so we were excited. Pastor Jeff and Kendall had scored some sweet free tickets for themselves so we rode with them to the game but couldn't sit with them. Pastor Jeff is probably the most southern person we have met here in LA so far, we blared country music on the way which reminded me of home. Inside the stadium, Bruce, Josh, and I found our seats then went to get Dodger dogs and something to drink... interesting! Anyways we got back to the game... Dodgers vs. Marlins!!! We got to see Manny Ramirez, cheered a lot, participated in the longest wave we had ever seen and really enjoyed the game. Sadly, the Dodgers lost 3 to 6. After the game, we got to watch the fireworks!! The coolest part was we got to go down and stand on the field to watch the fireworks. We walked over to left field and stood where Manny plays and took looks of pictures!!! It was a really fun night and great experience!!

Please be praying for the last week we are in LA. I know that most of us are home sick or at least missing someone so pray that we enjoy the last week here. Pray for the connections we have already made that we will be able to have some amazing final conversations with them in person and be able to get their contact information and continue those relationships when we are back home! Pray for the information and contacts we are handing off to people here in LA that those will be passed on to the right people for the specific person. Pray that this week flows well and as we are faced with some hard goodbyes to people we have become very close to this summer that we will have strength. Pray for the group as we begin to debrief or reflect on this summer. I also want to thank you for all of your pray and support for this summer. Praise God for the opportunity for us to be able to come to LA this summer and learn what we learned and met who we met.

With love,

Kelsey

Status: 2 air matresses down, 4 to go...

Here is a list of the ill as of this morning - Storm (me), Kelsey, Thomas, Josh, and Danny Canales

Thankfully (we appreciate the love and prayers we have received) only I still felt a little sick tonight, but -yay!- Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup to the rescue! Hopefully I will feel in tip-top shape by the morning.

To escape the threat of disease (okay, so I may be a little dramatic, but bear with me - I slept 18 hours today) Luke and Bruce had some male-bonding time. Kelsey and I debated for an hour over going to A Window Between Worlds today, but decided that we shouldn't risk infecting the women we work for because we are not sure if we are contagious.

However, we are hoping that we can be out and about on the field tomorrow. (The exception to this is me because my parents are visiting out here in California and I am going to take them around LA...I am very excited to see my family!)

Of course on the top of our prayer list there is:
1) Health: pray that Josh, Thomas, Kelsey, Danny, and I can recover quickly. Also pray that Luke and Bruce will be spared the sickness, as well as everyone else around us daily.
2) Wrap-up: We have just discovered that we will have a very early morning on Friday, which is to be followed by all-day meetings.
3) To allow great things to be done in these last few days here!

God bless, and please stay healthy!
Storm

P.S. - I wish Bruce could tell you himself of the joy he had last night, waking up numerous times to find himself in a black hole of deflated air-matress...but we have maneuvered the beds again in hopes that this setup may last for the rest of the trip....we'll see... :.D

Home(Sick)

So, I would just like to start off by telling you all something I have learned about myself since we came out here a month and a half ago. Until this trip, I had never really looked at myself as an "extrovert". Come to find out...I am. I like being around people and doing things. At first glance, this seems like a great quality. But from what I have learned, I am a special kind of extrovert. By special I mean the type that ALWAYS needs to be interacting with the people around me. This doesn't really work well with the rest of the team. You see, most of them absolutely need their alone, "down" time or things aren't that peaceful (haha). And God chose to wire me a bit differently. I understand any normal person would NEED that alone time, especially after being with the same 6 people for 6 straight weeks...24/7...but I just can't do it.

Last night we came in from the Crusades meeting and everyone went into introvert mode...again completely understandable. They had been socially interactive all day and needed to just chill. I of course, decided to annoy the group. Time for an oh-so clever metaphor via Bruce. As I have told my team many times, I often feel like a young puppy dog jumping up and down, running around in circles, wagging its tail while staring at its owner as he reads the newspaper. The rest of the team being the owner of the dog reading the paper. You see, what usually happens is the dog is either ignored by the annoyed owner, locked in its kennel, or taken out for a walk after constant begging. In the case of last night, Josh and Luke took me for a walk...literally. We walked to a near by park where we found some really sketchy people out and about. Thanks to the tacos we had eaten with the Cru folks, we had to cut short our time at the park and make a quick trip back to the church to tend to certain things...

After getting settled again, I decided to annoy the team some more and Josh, along with Kelsey and Storm, joined me for a movie around 11 pm. We watched the latest release of the "Friday the 13th" series. Pretty interesting to say the least. About 20 mins in, Storm cut out because she wasn't feeling well and I was left with the other two. From my observations, Kelsey likes horror movies, as long as there is someone nearby to protect her from whatever is in the movie. Last night, that person was me. To be completely honest, I am fearless. Nothing scares me...except for girls inches beside of me jumping and squealing in consecutive time with the most intense loud jumpy scenes of the movie. The scenes in which unintelligent, young, attractive girls were being chased by Jason were not that bad, but it gets pretty intense when I think Kelsey is being attacked as she gasps loudly and kicks the couch we are sitting on. She was bad enough, but Josh Littlejohn decided he needed protection about halfway through the movie also. I won't go into details, but lets just say that the door to our bungalow needed to be locked as we went to bed.

About 2:30 am, I wake up to furious beating on the door. I slowly open my eyes to see Storm with wide eyes peering into the window looking dead at me. What did I do? Lay my head back down of course, thinking it was just a dream. Thank heavens for Luke, he so graciously got up and opened the door for her so that she may get water for her and Kelsey. You see, they both woke up very sick this morning and didn't sleep any last night. It is either 1) food poisoning or 2) some horrible stomach bug. The diagnosis varies depending on who you ask. But either way, the girls couldn't function today. But being the kind, sweet guys that we are, we took care of them and catered to their every need.

Jonathan Stockstill also came today and we discussed various evangelism and church planting tactics. Our Swedish friend Bennett also joined us unannounced again. Which is perfectly fine. A little distracting, but fine.

After our meeting, us guys grabbed a bite to eat and fetched the girls some Gatorade to rehydrate them. We continued on to Starbucks for Free Pastry Day, but was very disappointed to find the absense of pastries...what a scam. We pretty much took today as our "day off" due to the busy schedule coming up. We have tomorrow on the field, providing the majority stay healthy (Thomas was feeling a bit queezy this evening and went to bed early). And the rest of the week is full of meetings.

So prayer. It works, and we need it.

1) Health. The girls, Thomas, and the rest of us. Pray that takes care of whatever is going on so that we can finish up these 2 weeks like we want.
2) Good spirits. As the title says, we are homesick. I dunno about the rest of the team but I really miss my family and friends back home. I miss Bojangles and mama's country cookin'. It's hard to not look at this as "only 2 weeks left", but instead we should be looking at it as "still 2 weeks left". Just pray that we overcome the homesickness and be in good spirits throughout the remainder of the trip.
3) The current relationships and where it goes from here. Whether it be Jeff and his new age spiritual community, or Tony G and the Chi Kung class. Pray that God opens up more opportunties with them so that we can dig deeper spiritually and leave them with a positive impact on their life. Also pray that the permenant church planters/pastors can take over where we left off and use the information and contacts to continue helping God's Kingdom grow.

I thank you, as always, for the support and prayers. Also thank you for taking the times out of your day to (still) read our blog and care enough about us to do that.

Until Tuesday,
God Bless,
-Bruce

Unexpected Faith

It's been quite the intense past week or so. With the group dynamics constantly shuffling, the ministry getting tougher and more intense and the thoughts of the final two weeks here...it hardly seems like we have time to think about what's been going on out here. 

So, here's my attempt at that. I guess the one big thing that has amazed me out here is how much my FAITH has been tested. I knew coming into this process that this was going to be pretty intense and I would more than likely be stretched out of my comfort zones, but I never expected to find myself questioning my faith, why I believe what I believe and if I even still believe it all.

Bruce and I had coffee with Jeff the other day and it was the most intense two hour conversation I've had in about a year or so. Bruce and I were on the receiving end of about every question you could think of for a Christian. We were asked about Heaven, the sovereignty of Christ, if Christ was the only way, we shared our faith stories...we were grilled. Jeff wanted to know everything he could about our faith stories and why we had faith in them, how we found faith in Christ in them, and how we knew whether or not we were actually believing in something real. It was intense.

Out here in LA most people are pretty self-motivated (motivated for themselves) and it's been difficult starting the spiritual conversations. But, once we've gotten into them, we've found it a lot easier to keep them going. After all, almost everyone we've met (at least for me) believes that any road that makes you happy and leads you to love and being a good person to other people will get you to God. Jeff is the same way. He's a man who goes on spiritual journeys and meditation trips all across the world, just to get in-tune with that 'Oneness' or 'juice' from God. My heart breaks for Jeff, a man who thinks that Christ just isn't enough. Yes, he thinks he's good enough for me and Bruce. But, he also thinks there's tons of other ways to get to God.

In fact, not only does my heart break for the Jeffs of this world, but for everyone who thinks that Christ isn't enough. Words can't express how saddened I am by something like that. The more I think of it, the more I my heart breaks for those that can't get their minds around the fact that faith is as simple as Christ and there's nothing else they need. Just Christ...that's it!

So, I think that's been our job out here as missionaries and as Christians all across this world. Those of you that are reading, its your job too. We're called to preach the gospel of Christ and only Christ. For it alone is all that this world needs. Perhaps we should stop focusing, as a body of Christians, on how best to reach the world with catchy t-shirts, music, books, language, and so on and focus solely on taking the story of Christ to this world. Sure, it'll call for some creativity and ingenuity, but fortunately for us the Creator of the universe is alive in us through the Spirit of Christ!!!

So yeah, that's one way my faith has been tested. I've been pushed to think about over and over again, is Christ really all I need in my life and is He really the ONLY thing I need in life. Each time I question it, I get the same answer. A low, hushed 'yes' that rises to a loud, rejoicing cry of 'YES!'. Indeed, Christ is all we need and all that this world needs.

Secondly, my faith has been tested in ways that God says he's going to move. I've seen God move before, and I've seen Him do some awesome things in the past through people around me and their ministries. What I haven't seen or experienced before is the deafening command I hear each morning I wake up. "Josh, go and I will bless." 

Each day on the field has been yet another reminder of how faithful the Lord is and another example of God blessing the faithful. I've seen some of my teammates stretched beyond their comfort zones and then some, and yet God has yet to withhold his blessings on their efforts. It's simply awesome.

While I know God is faithful in blessing our efforts, still myself and I'm sure others on our team have a hard time going out faithfully. We know the Lord will bless us, but sometimes our heart just isn't in it. And each time I catch myself with my heart and mind in other places than the field, the Lord sends a simple reminder (be it a thought, a conversation, etc.) to encourage me to bring my heart and mind back to the mission field that I'm currently on. 

I am finding myself living more and more by Hebrews 11:1. When Jeff asked Bruce and I the purpose of our faith, stories and what Christianity was to us. We both had few words. All we could say was its our reason for being, our reason for living, and our reason to get up in the morning. No, we can't always see what God's doing and we can't always see what God has done in our lives at the time...but we have faith that God is there. We have faith that Christ is sufficient enough for us. We have faith that Christ is moving and working in the ways we can see and even more so in the ways we cannot see. 

Oops...

So oops... I forgot to write the blog yesterday so this week Saturday is going to come before Friday!!! Anyways...

Thursday our usual day off included helping someone from the Hispanic church move furniture from his old apartment to his new condo most of the day. We were amazed by how sweet one of their new neighbors were when he brought us water because he said we looked like we were working hard. It was extremely nice of him and well appreciated. After a physical draining day so of us had our day off on Friday instead.

After dropping Storm and I off in Venice, Josh and Bruce headed to Starbucks to prepare for their conversation with Jeff. From what I have heard it was an intense conversation in a good way. Keep praying for their connection with Jeff. Pray that they will be able to have church with him and some of his friends before we leave.

In Venice, Storm and I went to Cafe Collage to have some quiet time before volunteering! We walked up to a Window Between Worlds and were bussed in (which is still amusing after a few weeks). We did lots of tasks like sculpting clay into different colors for an art project, sorting through notebooks to make sure all of the papers were there, and making journals. When we made the journals we got to use this super cool machine which was very awesome!!

We have made such good friends working here. It is so cool to know that they respect us so much for all of our hard work after knowing us for such a short amount of time. I don't know how many times they tell us thank you for helping. We couldn't have found a better environment to work in. They are always so encouraging to each other. It is also so awesome to be apart of something so great that uses art as a healing tool for domestic violence victims. I personally have a lot of respect for Cathy, the founder of the non profit, it took a lot to build up this organization and make it successful. She had an idea along with the help of others to incorporate two things that she loved and she did it. She went around the country and started these Windows programs. She learned many stories about victims of domestic violence. I think this is so amazing! I would love to have lunch with her and learn more about her story and life because she has been an inspiration.

While we were working Storm and I were talking to one of the other volunteers. She had grown up in LA her whole life. She went to school at UC Berkley and loved San Francisco. She graduated last May (as in 2008) with a degree in Psychology and then decided to travel for a year. She went to Thailand, Australia, and New Zealand. She meet her boyfriend who is from England in Australia. We were able to talk about the differences in growing up in NC compared to California. We were also able to ask her about her experience with religion. She said she had went to youth group when she was in middle school and felt that people were very hypocritical and closed minded about things. We told her that hypocritical Christians also frustrated us and that was not what we were about at all. We said that we thought sharing God's love was what was more important and she agreed. She was interested in learning about different religions and why people believe what they believe (the Psychology aspect). So pray that we will be able to have more conversations with her.

We came back for some of Lupita's amazing food!! Then we decided to go do something fun as a group which means we had to make a decision.... funfun!! We finally decided on putt putt but not your regular putt putt..... GLOW IN THE DARK PUTT PUTT!!! It was so much fun we played three games changing groups every time! It was such a fun place with everything in neon pink, yellow, orange, blue, green, and of course the black light! We even got a glow in the dark glove which was awesome to give high fives with! It was a great time!! Then we decided to go to IHop after that which I am pretty sure you can only go to late at night (lol). We had some yummy food like pancakes!!!! Well I was a good day!!!

So what can you be praying for... well...

boldness... in conversations with people we meet.

connections that we have already meet that these people will become persons of peace and be interested in learning about God and starting a bible study.

community we have formed that it continues to grow and that we will be remain each other's support systems.

as the trip is coming to an end pray for everything to get tied together.

pray for all of LA!

With love,

Kelsey

I do know where you go, is where I want to be

Today was a good day, we had our Chi Kung again. There were three new people today which means that practicing the moves took three times as long, which means...more pain. We were not able to catch the names of the three new faces there today but hopefully we will get to talk to them. It seemed empty today with the absence of Peter, he is in the U.K. till the 29th and we miss him. We were able to stay after and kick the bag and he taught us this new move, he also expanded on the dragon claw teaching. This move scares me cause it is literally something that can kill someone if done right. We stayed over and then finished. I talked with Tony a little bit and mentioned that next week will be our last week doing lessons. We were both sad thinking about it and it makes our time here seem short. We noticed the fruit of our physical labor when we biked up, I did not get too tired biking up the hills.

This past week has been great and God has continued to move in both areas. We are in this crazy stage in our trip where we realize that it is time to get ready to wrap things up. At the same time there are responsibilities that await us back at home, we don't want to be thinking about things there while we are out here but at the same time those things need to start to be addressed. So its super crazy, its hard not to think about the school year that is waiting for us.

I was talking with Luke earlier this week and I was thinking, has this trip been what we were hoping for and can this be a foundation for new parachute projects in the future. After talking to the Campus Crusade people, it has been awesome to hear the things that they have been doing. It was cool to hear about people they have saved and just how they share the Gospel. I felt a little discouraged that our group has not had anyone come to Christ yet and it brings the question, is what we are doing here something that will work? And after thinking about it, we may have not had any conversions yet and no groups have started in the Venice area, but we see the path that is laid if only we had two more months ahead. I do believe with my heart that this process works and can start small evangelically based churches that could change the face of Venice, Santa Monica, and Los Angeles as a whole. So even though we have not had what the common person's requirements for a successful mission trip, I do believe that this trip is a success already and I don't even know what God has in store for us for the last few weeks. I do believe that this new type of church is something that this generation can run with and it has definitely shaped my idea of how a church can look.

Thank you all again for your prayers, here is a list of things to keep in mind when talking to Jesus:

Tony-we are going to get him a Mandarin/English Bible before we leave

Subra-we had a really intense encounter with him lately

Peter-anxiously awaiting his return

Venice Beach

Santa Monica/College

Jeff-Josh and Bruce had intense conversation with him on friday

Window Between Worlds-Kelsey and Storm's volunteer area

Team Unity

Dean-For us to run into him again, we think we could have something good with him

Until next week,

Grace and Peace to you all