Opening doors

The doors continue to open...

This past Sunday was quite an amazing day for me, two of the men that we have been spending alot of time with were able to connect with us, and with God on a much deeper level. Tommy has been with us since the very first day we moved into the city. Sunday we got to meet his 10 year old son, Shawn, and Shawn's mother, Michelle, for the first time. They came over for breakfast and then went with us to our Sunday morning outreach to the retirement home. They then joined us later in the evening when we went to the local City Mission to serve in the kitchen, and also joined us as we led worship in the chapel service.

D'Andre, the man who is in charge of the activities on Sunday morning at the retirement home also came with us to the chapel service at the mission. He brought his two year old son, Jeremiah, whom we also met for the first time on Sunday. God has been speaking to him lately. Our neighbor, Pastor Paul, delivered the message and our friend came forward at the end and I was able to pray with him. God is not silent!!

We also have been developing a relationship with the cook at the Mission, Theo. He is an employee, not a resident. God has been working in his life as well. When Sam and I first met him he shared his passion for music, he writes and plays guitar (he is into jazz). This last Sunday he shared that the music that he has been writing has taken on a spiritual significance for him, and it has done so seemingly on its own; he has not set out to write about spiritual things. The group of guys he plays with are not so interested in this and so he wanted to hang out with us and jam. We had to coax it out of him, but when we finally got him to play us some of his stuff, I was really impressed. The guitar is really slow, mellow, jazzy, and the lyrics are very deep and meaningful, with kind of a spoken word, rap style happening.

We had another great evening at the City Mission and I had the good fortune of leading worship with someone on the drum kit who had never played with other instruments before. I have only ever played with a kit once, and Shawn (Tommy's son) had never played the drums with a group before. Our practice session sounded pretty bad, but we prayed and encouraged one another that God was happy that we would make a joyful noise to him (emphasis on noise!). We led the men in worship that evening, and I know that they were blessed. Many of them were engaged with God in worship. I was happy that Shawn could participate; it was right that he do so...

I think I could ramble on and on about the various open doors that are being presented to us, Tamy and I got to speak at a college group a couple of weeks ago, Sam and Dre were there also; and we were all able to encourage and pray for several of the students. I continue to see God moving in my workplace. I have had more spiritual conversations with customers and co-workers, and now Sam works for the same company as I. We continue to have new people coming to our Wednesday night group, we are trying to work through the issue of kids as we have our two, another two from another family, and probably a fifth this upcoming Wednesday. What a wonderful "problem" to have! Tamy continues to meet with other women in her Mom's Meetup group.

This morning we were remarking, (I even got teary-eyed!) about how wonderfully different the people in our church are. We have street people and successful entrepreneurs, students and parents, educated and blue collar, people of different background and personality, ethnicity and economic status. I do not believe we have reached the place where we are as diverse as heaven, but we are on our way, and heaven looks on with cheers!

At some point in the future I hope to have some exciting news about new opportunities at the mission, but I do not want to post about them until they have become a reality. Please pray that God would continue to allow us to serve at the Mission, and would open doors wider at the local college campus. These are the two areas that I feel are primary (at least for the church, for us as individuals we should view our primary ministry as our jobs as they take up the bulk of our time).