Update 12/28 Partnerships

Last week was a fairly typical week in the life of Neighborhood Ministry. It started out with not a whole lot planned and we ended up experiencing some very cool God moments.Tina who we had been having Bible studies with on Wednesday nights formally gave her life to Christ on Saturday night. The best part was Jimmy was part of the conversation and was encouraging and using his life as an example to her.Last night at the Bible Study in Agape Park we shared the first 30 pages of the story. I was apprehensive about reading it because it brought to light many of my original pre concieved ideas I had about the park and the people in the park. I didn't know what to expect but Tiffany was sobbing by the end and Jimmy called me later and said thank you over and over again. This is first of all God's story and it is all of us who are involved whether it be physically or by prayer.Who knows what will happen with the story but it touched them and brought us all closer together.Jimmy showed the dvd to some of the other people in the park and it was a very moving moment for all of them to experience together.Some really cool partnerships/connections came together last week:1. Brandon from the Portage Resale shop texted me last tuesday to tell me they had gotten a bunch of brand new kids coats and if I knew of anyone who needed them? I didn't specifically but I thought we could probably find some people. We did, a group of us on tuesday went knocking on trailers in 4 different parks in Portage and gave away 20 or so kids coats. We met new people and reconnected with others in these parks. One individual we reconnected with was a 30-40 year old with a cane. He had been knocked out of a bucket truck while changing a sign and hit a telephone line. He was permanately injured he only had a flimsy pair of shoes to wear. He asked if we knew of a place he could get a pair of boots. The resale shop again came through with giving us a pair of boots for this man. he was very excited to be able to walk much better.The resale shop got another 90 coats on tuesday afternoon, The thought came for Wednesday to take out their box truck fill the back with racks of coats and park in the middle of a park to give away coats. Between the two days there were 50-60 coats given away.In the midst of the second coat giveaway Doug and others met an elderly couple who were in their 60s whose trailer was lost in a fire about two weeks ago. They lost everything. We are going to put a list together today of what their exact needs and clothes sizes are.2. Dave and Pam live in Mercy Park we signed them up for Christmas baskets through Liberty. Dave and Pam's trailer is in rough shape as many are in Mercy Park. The couple who delivered the Christmas basket saw that there were many issues that could be solved with some help so they connected them with neighborlink and a contractor. They have been heating their trailer with their stove (that is not uncommon) some of the work was done last week and some will be done this week.3. people from Portage wanting to go to church- This week because of the connections we made in Portage we had three families ask to come to church. Transportation is a huge issue (one that we may have an interesting way of solving in 2010) and many of the people in the neighborhoods do not have good vehicles. So when people ask to come to church they need rides. (This is one of the reasons why we do Bible Studies in the neighborhoods and bring church to them.) So there becomes an interesting dilema that we are thinking and praying about:1. Do we commit a vehicle to go to the northside of Portage and bring them to Liberty?2. Do we connect with the many good churches between their residences and Liberty?We are leaning much more to number 2. There is no reason why we would need to bus people 25 minutes to a church. As long as there are churches that will accept and love these people than it would be better off for all involved to go to a church much closer to their neighborhoods.A couple of things to remember if these people come to your church. They think it is normal to share faith with their neighbors. They think it is normal to have Bible studies and prayer times in their neighborhoods. We are going to continue to teach them that God is going to use them in their current places of dwellings. Our goal is not to move them into middle class neighborhoods (those are our neighbors and our responsabilities) but rather equip and train them to continue showing love to their communities.
As we have seen with Agape Park God's love through His people can change a community.