Sunday, July 22, 2007

Brittany Kinard

Hi Mom and Dad, Aus, and Shelb,
I miss you guys so much, im having an amazing time...tomorrow were going to Disney Land! I cant wait to come home and see you all! I love you guys soooo much!! Aus i hope your birthday was awesome and i cant wait to plan your party with you and shelb its only a little bit till yours :)
well i love you guys and ill see you soon! love Brittany

Saturday, July 21, 2007

We're be home in 3 days!!

We left CSM today and holy cow it was so hard to say good bye to the leaders at CSM. We went and helped at a place called Dream Center and it was so different then what we had done for the past week. We went to apartment complexes and passed out food to the people in the apartments and then past out flyers to invite them to come to church on Sunday. We went and had lunch at Chic-fil-a and holy cow it was amazing to eat the most wonderful chicken in like the entire world. We then went and checked into our hotel and chilled for a little while which was so much fun and relaxing. We went to dinner at Mimi's restaurant and guess who was there??? Oh come on, you must know who it is... alright it was the Annens!! I am so happy that we were all able to see them, but personally for me to have been so close to her since middle school, it was beyond words seeing her again. Oh how much i love her. After dinner, which was amazing we went back and said good bye to Larissa. People cried, well Larissa, Chelyan, Emily, Skylar, and i teared up a bit, and it was so hard to see her go. Chelyan, Skylar, Emily, and I talked about it and it was an emotional night because to see her and then have her leave was so incredibly hard. Larissa, if you are reading this, your small group loves you so much and can't wait to see you again. We love you all and miss you and now it's time for bed. LOVE YOU!!!

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Update...July 18th!!!

Craig Goldman’s blog.

Wow! God has been doing awesome things over the past week and a half. Being in L.A is absolutely amazing! To see the diversity is eye-opening and pretty sad. Literally you can cross over one street and it will turn from highly populated by the homeless to top-notch L.A. The ways we have been serving have stretched me so much. God has been working in my heart and breaking me down. He’s been breaking my pride and helping me to see how much these people are like us. I definitely find myself stereotyping and judging a lot, but God has been teaching me how much they just want to be loved and are just like me in so many ways.

The VBS has been so awesome. The kids we are able to teach and hang out with are totally sweet! Some of them are trouble makers, but so many of them just want attention and love. A lot of them are the sweetest, kindest, cutest kids!! Many of the times we won’t even have to initiate anything they will just run up to us and hug us or hold our hands or sit in our laps. It’s so much fun. I’m part of the worship team and over the past few days the kids have been learning the songs, and they totally love the worship time. Sometimes they will just randomly start singing the songs!

Thank you so much for all your prayers! God is definitely working! Please pray for patience and love, and that God would continue to break down barriers in our hearts!

Lots o’ love!

Craig

Stephanie Jevert’s blog:

First off, I am so excited to be able to finally blog about what has happened so far. I have been wanting to blog, but so far I haven’t been able to so off we go!! Well, I’m sure that people have talked about the Student Leadership conference that some of us went to a week ago, but let me tell you, it was amazing!! I guess all the details are going to have to be shared in person (sorry mom J). So, this past week has been a huge eye opener. Los Angeles has got to be one of the sweetest places that I have been to… well, at least close lol. The past couple of days we have spent the morning going and doing service projects and then in the afternoon we go and do the VBS.

The service projects have stretched me and I am so geeked about that! We have gone to Project Angel Food, LA missions, and then today my group went to Midnight Mission. We have done a lot of work with homeless people, which as Jessica said, “It’s just a situation that they are in, it’s not who they are”.

Well, I guess I should give you a rundown of what we have done with recreation. We have had so much fun playing with the parachute, which has got to be the best invention ever created! Thank you to whoever created the separachuteJ. The kids have so much fun just being around us and playing with us. We love them so much and I am going to miss them so much when we leave.

Just a random fact that I would like to share… we had a big get together with all the groups that are doing mission work with CSM and I got to be in a skit which was so SWEET! Alright I really want to go play volleyball so, I love you all and I will see you when I get home!!! LOVE MUCH!!

Love always,

Stephanie

Tales from Group One

This blog was written on Tuesday night, however, we lost our internet connection before we could post. So, here is Tuesday night’s blog entry.

Hey this is LeAnn, Katelyn, and Emma! (Hana says hi) We are having a TON of fun...we are all safe and sound and healthy. Thanks for all the prayers! The kids at VBS are amazing and unbelievable. We are all so excited to share that it’s kind of hard to explain it all at once. So please bear with us as we try to explain it. All of us are from team 1 with Michael and so others will have to write later from team 2. So far we have worked with a bunch of homeless people and are really having our eyes open to the fact that they are actual people just like us whose mistakes are just more evident. We went to St. Francis church yesterday. There we sorted clothes, packed bags for families, sorted food and Emma, Ashton, and Larry served food to homeless people. Later that day we started VBS... The kids are so well behaved and we have all fallen in love with them! Today we all split up into 3 groups and took a homeless person out for breakfast. Through this we truly got to see the side of being homeless. Then we went to the midnight mission where we served people of the street lunch. These people are amazing and we all learned from them. Then we went shopping in little China... we all got GREAT deals... Mom you would be proud! Then we headed for VBS. Again we had a great time with them. Can't wait till tomorrow to love on the kids again. We hope you all keep us in your prayers and we love you all. Good night... :D

Hey mommy, dad, Jena, and rest of family and friends, its Katelyn by the way! I just wanted to let you all know that I love you and I am having so much fun. God is truly working wonders in all our lives and I am so excited to tell you all. Check out the pictures too I took some of them. Well I love you all good night! :)

Hey Mom and Dad and the rest of ya, its LeAnn! I miss y'all so much! This trip is so amazing and has stretched me in so many ways! God is amazing! Can’t wait to tell you all about it! Love ya lots!
LeAnn

P.S. Larry is doing good too but he's upstairs in bed and I'm headed that way too... so I'll write back later... love y'all!

Hey Ma, Daddy, Tim and Ruthie! This is Emma! I miss you guys SO much. This experience has been absolutely amazing! God has been doing so much in my life. I can't wait to bring this difference home with me and let you guys see it too. I have been so moved by the "need" of Los Angeles. It’s made me think of what I can do back home. Just to see the gratitude on the faces of the people we serve is so awesome. I can't even explain how amazing God has been. He is totally working in sooooooooooo many ways that is way too incredible to describe. Well I have to hit the sack (bed) so I will hopefully post again later. I love you guys more than I can say!
God loves you most!
Emma
Psalm 18:1-3

Monday, July 16, 2007

Pictures from Day 1!

Hello everyone! Here are some pictures from day one.... Sorry there aren't more from Sunday and Monday, but I'm tired and need to get to sleep! I promise I'll do more soon! Enjoy!








Chelyan and Emily waiting for your flight from Grand Rapids to Minneapolis.







Here is Larry working hard at our service project on Saturday after we arrived in LA!

Way to take that trash to the dumpster, Brittney and Sarrah!


Michael--working hard!


After a fun day of serving, we had some fun goofing around on the turf yard....


We ate dinner at a very good Thai place....

Sunday, July 15, 2007

Lauren

Please pray for Lauren and her family. They unexpectedly lost Kevin's father early this week due to a car accident. Lauren flew home on Saturday to be there for the funeral, and will be flying back into LAX tomorrow (Monday) morning. Please pray for safety in her travels, and for God to be glorified in the conversations still to come.

Saturday and Sunday

Hello!
It's Sunday night. Late Sunday night. It's been a great two days since the rest of the group joined us. Everyone got in yesterday at about 9:30. By the time we got vans and got situated, it was time to enjoy some grub. We grabbed food and headed to the Orange County Rescue Mission. It's an incredible new facility that is housed on an old military base. The barracks have been converted to house homeless and recovering addicts. It will be a place for single men and women, single men and women with children, and families to begin learning how to support themselves. The cafeteria was brand new and was built by donations and designs from the Cheesecake factory. The new chapel will seat 300, and we listened as an employee shared his heart about all of the people that will hear the message of Jesus Christ in that facility ... so cool!

After leaving the Rescue Mission, we ventured up the Pacific Coast Highway and enjoyed a little scenery on our way back up to LA. A quick stop to In n Out, and then we arrived at our housing facility with CSM.

This morning we got up early, and headed back to the big OC. We joined in for the high school service at Saddleback, and then big church. Tiffany K., Kevin B., and Mrs. B. joined us for the service and lunch.

After lunch, we had just enough time to get back to the CSM housing and catch our breath before we began our orientation. Our hosts, Jannelle and Lisa, gave us the run down, and then took us out on the town. After a dinner of Thai at Mae Ploy, we went on a prayer tour of the city. The first stop was a park in the neighborhood of Pico Union where CSM is located. This neighborhood is almost all populated by immigrants. We prayed at the edge of the park, a location populated by the poorest of poor, while looking across to a very wealthy hotel that is still the location of movies, commercials, and gatherings of the elite. Right next to that is the welfare building.

Next was city hall. We prayed over the brokenness of the people of the city, and for God to tender our own hearts.

Our next stop took us into the heart of Skid Row. Our team was really broken to see the reality of people living in tents and under tarps on the street. Sarrah and Mandy were particularly broken to see strollers outside of some of those tents.

Our last stop was an elementary school in Skid Row. This school was built as a temporary location with portable buildings. It's now been in service for almost 25 years. Most of these kids don't have two parents, and the parent they have is possibly involved in prostitution or drugs, or working in one of the many sweat shops in the city. They are all living on the streets and trying to survive. School isn't a very high priority.

Our team ended the night with some sharing at a spot downtown. I think this was a great way to start the week.

Please pray for:
Unity with the team
Energy
Broken hearts
Final preparation for VBS

We've got an early morning tomorrow. I'll try and write more tomorrow night. Thanks for all of your prayers.

Michael