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

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!

Top 15

reasons why we are thrilled to move 

In No Specific Order:

1. We get a chance to live on the west coast

2. We get to attend and serve at South Bay Church

3. We can take a paid-for road trip across country when me move

4. Our parents, family and friends have an opportunity and reason to travel to the west coast

5. I have a much higher chance at getting a job in my field

6. We are close to awesome locations and new places to hike and be outdoors

7. We are a weekend driving distance from Disneyland

8. We can hopefully reunite with some of our extended families

9. We get to be trained in ministry by amazing leaders and church planters

10. We feel 100% it is an answer to prayer

11. The area is so culturally and nationality diverse

12. We will have easy access to buying local, fresh and organic

13. We can watch sunsets over the ocean

14. We hear there are no mosquitos to contend with

15. We can eat at the Grove Restaurant in Hayes Valley, San Fran on the weekends

From the East to West!

california

This past year has been kind of up in the air whether JM would stay in the Coast Guard or not. It seemed as though every few months there were opportunities to get out or stay in. Though being in the military is not exactly our favorite choice, we cannot deny the support we've had because of it.
This May, JM will be graduating from Liberty University with a Religion degree [I can't believe it's just a few weeks away]. He has been doing online school for the past 4 years to get his bachelors while in the military. I'm so proud of him. He's been able to pay for school with Tuition Assistance offered to active duty military personnel. That means even when he gets out, he will still have the GI-Bill.
All this to say, JM signed for 6 years with the Coast Guard when he went in. He has been in for 5 years now and we are up to transfer this summer. With many cuts going on in the Coast Guard, there was a possibility we could get out early. Our thought/ plan was that we would get out this summer or finish his last year here and go into ministry when the time was up. We desire to be in full-time ministry! But as many of you may know, we believe it is important to go into full-time ministry debt-free. We understand that it is not always possible, but we believe as good stewards, we should be responsible for our finances and pay off all possible debt - aside from a mortgage if we were to buy. It is a risk in this economy to trust that we can make enough money to pay off our debt in the time we hope - but God is also a great provider. Also, we believe that training or interning under the leadership of others is valuable before taking on the endeavor of church planting or leadership for that matter.
We went to San Francisco for our 1-year anniversary in early January. We were excited to visit the West Coast and South Bay Church, a church our mentors launched in 2009. We had a great vacation and visit to the church, but knew that it would most-likely be a long time before we made it back to the West Coast. We got to share with the pastors everything we've been through in the last few years and bring them up to date with our lives.
Shortly after we got back from our vacation, we got a phone call from JM's Detailer asking us to list our top choices from a list of 5 locations for a transfer. We had it in our minds that we would be getting out, but made the list just to see. Our #1 was in Washington State, just for fun. A day later, the Detailer called JM to say he picked Alameda, CA - just minutes from San Francisco. He gave us two days to decide if we would take the job. After a lot of prayer and weighing pro's and con's, we decided to take it. We don't believe in coincidence. Not only were we in California weeks before, we had an opportunity to visit the church that has been in our hearts for years.
We trust that everything happens for a reason and that God can use even our mistakes for His good work. Though in military life, "you can't always get what you want" (thanks Mick Jagger), we trust that God has allowed us to benefit from the opportunity. Although it's not a lot of money, we have a steady income and housing benefits, JM has school paid for and we have great insurance.
Our prayer in whether or not we transferred and extended the enlistment or got out was this: that God would provide a steady income to pay off our debt (significantly my school loans) in 3 years and that we would have the opportunity to serve and be trained in ministry. We believe that answer came in this opportunity to take the job in Alameda, CA. So in just 2 months we will be making our cross-country move to the Bay area, CALIFORNIA! And we are so excited to join the South Bay Church family and train under their mentorship and leadership! We plan to move to the South Bay area and JM will commute to work so we can live and serve in community with our church family.
We know that in taking this job, we must be prepared for surprises - being in the military, you have to understand that you don't always get what you signed up for. So in understanding that, we know that we still have an amazing opportunity and that we have to trust that no matter what, we made this decision based on what we believed was best for us. We are so thankful for the support of our family as we take this journey along with a 3,000 mile move across the country. We believe we are being faithful to what God has in store for us and our families trust that!

As you can see, we are moving almost directly straight across the country!

Here's our route for our two week road trip when we move!

Stay tuned for the opportunities in California we are so excited about!