Tuesday, December 22, 2009
MERRY CHRISTMAS from NORTH CAROLINA...
David and I have arrived safely in North Carolina after a crazy day of flying and barely catching our flight out of San Francisco. If you've ever seen the movie 'Home Alone' where the family is running through the airport to catch their flight... we'll that was us almost a week ago! Thankfully, we got to our plane with 5 minutes to spare!
Since arriving, we have had lots of time with my (Kim's) family. We enjoyed the Christmas Cantata at church Sunday morning and seeing many wonderful friends! Now, we are gearing up for the holiday festivities this week!
Please keep us in your prayers as we will be speaking next week at Youth Tremors, a Youth Conference held by the North Carolina Yearly Meeting of Friends. There will be approximately 130 young people, ages 12-18, that we get to impart to and impact with the life changing message of Jesus and the life He desires for them!
We will be sure to update you, as soon as we can, but until then we will be busy eating, visiting, and celebrating our Lord's birth.
Merry Christmas with all our love!
David and Kim
Me and Miss Ria
Serving Lunches...
Being Silly...
Getting 'Mummy-fied'!!!
Haning Out...
Summer Day Camp 2010!!
Our Neighborhood
We live on the south-side of San Francisco in a forgotten neighborhood made up of over 30,000 residents. 61% of our neighbors are African-American. 16% are Hispanic and 8% are of Asian decent. Of the 30,000 neighbors we have, 134 are Caucasian. Needless to say, we stand out a little bit!
Gun shots and sirens are a regular occurence here in our neighborhood. There are 16 known gangs located within our streets. Our neighbors have the highest asthma and infant mortality rate in the state of California. Apart from those issues, our neighborhood is home to many other health related problems due to the fact that it is built on an old Naval Shipyard which was abandonded shortly after WW2. To this day, it releases toxic chemicals into the air.
As we have spent time studying the neighborhood, it is easy for us to get overwhelmed by ALL the problems, but God has kept revealing to us the potential of this neighborhood if His people would turned to Jesus.
The Vision...
Due to the numerous gangs in our neighborhood, it is extremelly complicated and difficult to hold community wide events. With each gang comes a complete territory, creating lines that can not be crossed. For that reason, we have broken up the neighborhood into 5 key areas. Four of the areas are different public housing projects. The fifth is around the corner from where we live.
Our plan is to start engaging the youth in programs such as sports clinics, dance clubs, art/graffiti groups, etc... to offer them a positive alternative to gang life. Our desire is that these ‘clubs’ would lead into discipleship groups located in the 5 key areas. We would eventually like to partner with local churches and key leaders in the community to form a youth church. We hope to start our first discipleship group here in our home and help run sports clinics at the local recreation center later this year. We are also constantly out on the streets, telling young people about Christ, and building relationship with them. We are in the process of turning our garage into a mini-youth center equipped with a X-box, TV, and, hopefully, a pool table. We want to offer a safe place for youth to hang out instead of being out on the streets.
love you both very much..... Merry Christmas.. I hope you get into many snowball fights!!!
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