Thank you for all your prayer and support for the Education Assistance program we are developing. We did a soft-launch test the second week of September to get a picture of what we were needing to work on. It proved eye opening so we have a lot to work on.
I am currently working on focusing our plan so we can officially launch with a more streamlined and hopefully productive system.
Life has unexpected turns in it, but God is always faithful. I will give more backstory to our journey at a later date, but here is what we’re up to right now:
COVID-19 has made everything chaotic this year and things that were hard before are now acutely frustrating and even unmanageable. School for K-12 in particular is in a bad spot with lots of controversy and no clear answers, and many vulnerable families and communities are worse off because of it. One such group in particular that is being hit hardest are immigrant and refugee families because of language barriers and many working multiple jobs to provide for their families. The issue when it comes to online homework assignments and online or hybrid classes is the parents and care-takers who know very little English cannot help their children do basic homework assignments because they don't understand the instructions.
Our trip to NOLA has wrapped up. We had a great time with the New Orleans Chinese Baptist Church youth group at their retreat weekend where I had a chance to teach more in depth on the elements of the Gospel, our identities in the Gospel, and what it means to be Gospel fluent. We also had a great time hanging with the students…
We are pumped to move to this beautiful city!
After a mind numbing amount of Craigslist searching and driving randomly through neighborhoods we nailed down a place. It's an old stacked duplex from the 1920s, 2 bed 1 bath with a large living room and open dining room setup which should do well in facilitating new in-home Bible studies and Gospel Communities. It's on University Ave. just off 35th, which is awesome since Mars Cafe is on the same street about 11 blocks away. Biking/skateboarding/walking distance is a luxury I very much prefer after my years living around the corner from barista job at PJ's on Magazine in NOLA.
Keeva did a practical interview at a cosmetology school and that went well. Now we just need to see what's available and pray about whether she should teach and work at Ulta, or just one or the other.
With jobs pretty much take care of and a place nailed down, we will be able to move in on August 20 or before depending on the current tenant and the owners turn around time on it.
Also I'm still learning more and more of all the top notch site development I can do through Squarespace, my hosting and development platform. I added in some contact and feedback in a new page and combined my news and blog posts into one feed for RSS (which the RSS button is on the bottom of the Blog page) and to keep things simple. Also on the new Connect page has an email subscription option. Stay tuned for more updates and a more robust site in the near future!
I leave you with an article from a site that's new to me called Made for More. The article is about how a grace filled life should be rubbing off on those around us.
Focusing all efforts toward DSM!
We have been living in Omaha for a year now (more on the later), and it's time we move over to Des Moines. Tomorrow, 7/24, we are going to DSM for a couple of job interviews and to try to look at some apartments. I have an interview at Mars Cafe which I'm pumped about, and Keeva has an interview at La James cosmetology school. She would like to both teach and work in a salon, so pray for that and God's direction in those choices.
We also need a place to stay asap. It would be ideal to rent a place for 1-2 years and begin house shopping as we get our bearings in the city and God opens up opportunities and directs us to more specific areas on the map. We do think it will be between 31st and downtown, and Ingersoll and University (or so) area, which is still a good swath of land.
So pray for those opportunities and for God's direction in that. We believe that jobs and places to live should be so much more that just that, and that God wants to use them for redemptive Gospel community.
