Why community?

I haven't been a part of the blog world in a while. To be honest, I had to let go of it because it began to consume me. I became active our first year of marriage. I wasn't working at the time so I found most of my time alone spent reading other people's blogs. They were encouraging. They challenged me. They made me want to be a better person. But quickly it turned into a comparison trap for me. I felt like I was losing who I was because there were so many other incredible women that I found myself wanting to be like. I lost confidence in myself and in my ability to be influential because I was trying to be someone I wasn't.
It has been a few years now of stepping away from this and realizing that I only need to be important to myself, my family, and my friends close to me. I don't need to impress anyone and I definitely do not need to try and draw attention to myself.
For me, a blog should be simply this: A place for me to write my story and the things I love. You see, I am not the best writer, but when I take the time to do it, I find untapped feelings and emotions that are not really exposed anywhere else. I am a thinker. But if I don't apply, my thoughts get easily lost, overlooked, and undervalued. Some may ask, why not write a journal or keep your thoughts private? I agree those are both imperative and important. But I also believe there is value in community. Value in being a little bit vulnerable to people you know and don't know. There are some things in life that cannot be done alone. Humans desire other humans and to know we are not alone in this life. We desire to share our celebrations and our struggles.
When John Mark and I started dating we knew our marriage was going to be different. We knew that God had a purpose for our lives and we needed to obey. We believe that community is God-created. That life is meant to be shared. Because of this, we strongly feel led to start a church. A community that is open to all people coming together and hearing about God's generous love. Followers of God or not, we believe that we are best when we are being refined and shaped by our relationships with: family, friends, neighbors, etc.
JM, myself and a few others are currently in full swing of planning The Gathering Church - a place that people can gather together to worship weekly. But, most importantly, we believe the church happens on a day to day basis. People coming together to commune with their city, friends, families and neighbors. People that open their homes and learn how to be good neighbors day to day, because that's what Jesus teaches us.
All this to say, JM asked me to start writing about this process and how it came to be. I am using my personal blog to start writing about this until we can launch our website. So for now, I am asking for your prayer for the process - the steps that need to happen before now and next summer. Also I pray that we all can learn to be good neighbors day to day. Sometimes it is easy to get in planning mode and realize we are missing out in the relationships right in front of us.

So then, why community? Please share what community has done for you.

Beautiful Day - Louder Than Words!

In February, I was introduced to my new and dear friend Kalani. Together, we took on a project that rocked our world! We were asked by one of our pastors to co-lead the Beautiful Day Project for our church. It is a collaboration of churches in our area coming together to serve our community. This is the first year that our church has been a part of this.

This year, 14 churches came together to beautify 16 different schools and many other projects throughout the bay area.

As for Kalani and I, we planned 3 different projects: 

1) VINCI PARK ELEMENTARY – 600+ volunteers
We has the awesome opportunity to do a massive beautification project at Vinci Park Elementary, a school 1.5 miles from our church campus. We deep cleaned the campus, re-landscaped the outside, re-organized the library, painted where it was needed, and gave classrooms, MPR room, and teachers’ lounge a face lift. 

2) FAMILY SERVICES BY CITYTEAM – 80 volunteers

Family Services provides resources to community members living below the poverty line. We were honored to have the chance to paint interior walls, beautify the children's area, deep clean the kitchen and other areas needed, and beautify the grounds.

3) HERITAGE HOME BY CITYTEAM – 20 volunteers
Heritage Home is a haven of hope for homeless, poor, abused, and pregnant women. We reorganized and painted the laundry room and 3 bathrooms, cleaned the kitchen and vans and blessed the women and children living there.

I have never worked on anything to this capacity and it really stretched my experiences and talents. Without Kalani, I feel like this would not have been possible. Where I was weak, she was strong and we were able to be a part of something bigger than I could have imagined. 

As we were planning I thought to myself, I will never volunteer myself to lead something like this again. I felt like I didn't have the capacity or the knowledge to organize such a large event. But through this entire experience, I'm reminded again and again of the Lord's favor and answer to prayer. 

Paul reminds us that we have to have faith that all things come together for good for those who love Him (Romans 8:28). I believe that so much!

Our desire in doing these projects is to build relationships with the people of our community and to build bridges between the city and The Church. 

Through this entire experience, we were able to build an incredible relationship with the Principal and her staff as well as the staff at CityTeam International.

These locations experienced a group of people being The Church - His hands and feet in action.
For the school, their are over 600 students, their parents and families, and those that live neighborhood.

Family Services serves the poor in the community every day of the week and we had the opportunity to serve them. Heritage Home currently has 15 women and their children living there.

This past Sunday we did not meet in a church, we were The Church in action, serving our city!

In writing about this, I am not here to boast about what I did, but boast about the lives that were impacted with the love of Christ. Christ's love is a free gift that He wants to share with ALL people. All that I know is to do my best of sharing that love with others.

What an amazing experience!

Vinci Park Elementary Video

On Being Honest

Most of the time it's hard to acknowledge my own failures.

I am pretty good at recognizing everyone else's.

And I am even better at pointing the blame to someone other than myself.

But only when we learn to acknowledge our own failures can we grow and change.

I am learning a lot about evaluating programs and ways of doing ministry.

But the scary part is when the evaluation is turned to my personal life.

Ever so often I go into a crisis mode when I feel like anything I am doing in my life is insufficient and I break down.

The truth:

I am terrible at following through with most things.

Most times I don't finish a book.

I don't like confrontation.

I run away from problems.

I speak before I think.

I am awful at keeping up with friends.

I assume people don't like me up front.

I read my Bible steadily for a few weeks, then don't.

Today, I had my breakdown and it is time I evaluated myself.

Here are some things I am working on:

I cannot provide for my family like I want, and that's okay.

My plans will never be as good as His.

Freely have I received God's gift and freely must I serve Him.

When there is a problem, don't point my finger, seek a solution.

I cannot run away if something isn't turning out the way I want.

My attitude really does depend on my relationship with God.

If I want to be a part of change, I need to make my own small steps toward it.

DO the things I am passionate about, even when I don't know how.

Work on finishing what I've started.
Point out the positives before the negatives.

First Season in California

Today marks 5 months that we've lived in California.

I cannot believe the opportunities we've had to grow in these last months.
We immediately got involved with South Bay Church. I have been given several projects to work on and have interned here since September. After this internship is over, I plan to start volunteering with another non-profit to continue to gain more experience in my field. John Mark and I also joined the student ministry leadership team.  Before we came, there were weekly Bible studies and a few student ministry events, but our awesome team has played a major role in making Ignite Student Ministry into a program! It has truly been a growing experience and we are thrilled to be a part of this from it's beginning stages.
After months of applying to what seemed like everywhere and job hunting, I was finally able to start my job with REI in October. I am so grateful to finally be working after over a year of unemployment. I am really enjoying it. Even though it's retail and my hours are always different, I feel so blessed to be working and feel like there is a lot of opportunity to grow in the company! I hope to stay with REI for a while!
JM's job has thrown us a few unanticipated curveballs, but for the most part it is a good job and has given him some time to still be active at South Bay. Unfortunately he has worked most weekends and has been given some weird hours, but we are happy that he so far has not been deployed away from home.
It definitely was a culture shock when we moved here and life is not quite what we were expecting, but we are in a good place in our lives right now and we are just trying to take everything in while learning as much as possible. The Bay area pace of life and traffic is a lot to get used to, but we've been able to take some incredible hikes and day trips and there is still so much more to explore!
We miss our families like crazy!! I believe this is the longest I have ever gone without seeing my family, but we know this is just another piece of our life journey! I really struggle with looking forward to the next step in life rather than living in the now, so I am really trying to acknowledge this incredible opportunity we have in this season of life. But to be honest, it's really hard to not look forward to moving closer to family. Thankfully, the Redwines will be here for Christmas and we are so excited!
Thanksgiving was my first holiday away from family - JM had to be away a few times when he was underway. We planned on just staying home, the two of us and having our first holiday alone. But some of the staff at South Bay invited us to join them for Thanksgiving. We decided to go and it was an awesome day with our church family! All together there were 5 families - 10 adults and 9 kids! We are all transplants to California and thousands of miles away from our families. It's incredible to do life with these people!
God is doing big things in our hearts and lives and this new season is seriously just insane!

Comparison

I have stayed away from the blog world these last few months because I found myself in a funk.
The COMPARISON funk.

I found myself wishing I could be as cool and creative as other wives.
I found myself dreaming and hoping for the perfect little home and family.
I found myself feeling so insignificant in comparison to the blogs I'm following.
I found myself trying to look cooler and more awesome than I really am.

COMPARISON is my worst enemy.
For that, I've kept my distance.

Galatians 6:4-5 The Message
"Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don't be impressed with yourself. Don't compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life."

Adventures

We have officially moved from coast to coast and have been here in California for 2.5 weeks and have been in our apartment for 1.5 weeks. We are still unpacking as we just got our furniture a few days ago. It was 6 weeks and two days since we slept in our own bed and still, we haven't unpacked our suitcases. We spent 2 full weeks on the road for an EPIC, all-American Road trip with our friends Taylor and Ashton. Here's some photos to prove it!

My Honey Graduated!

I am so proud of JM. He graduated from Liberty University last weekend with a Bachelor of Science in Religion. For those of you who don't know, we met our freshman year of college at Charleston Southern University in 2005 and became very good friends. We had a lot of growing up to do and we took different directions in life. A year later, we both dropped out of school. I started working full-time and volunteering at my church and he joined the Coast Guard. In 2008 we started dating long-distance. I started school again at Lee University and JM began online school with Liberty University. Since then, he has been doing school year a round on top of his full time job. I am so proud of his hard work and tenacity. We have been through a lot this past year and it could have been really easy for JM to take a break from school. But he persisted and finished with an overall GPA 3.2! If you knew how bad we did our first year of college, you will understand that it was no easy feat. We headed up to Lynchburg to see Liberty's campus for the first time for his graduation. It was awesome to see him graduate and wear his Coastie uniform [it was much easer to find him that way!]

Way to go my love!