Weekly Church Plant Gatherings, Summer Missions Teams, & Missionary Support Needed!
Hey friends!
We first want to say THANK YOU so much for your continued support. We could not do this without each of you giving, praying, and being on our team! This is such an exciting season of ministry--one that requires lots of faith and one we could not walk alone. You have no idea how much your obedience and love is linked to everything we do here in Los Angeles!
**No time to read? Here's the TL;DR (the short version):**
- We've started weekly church plant meetings and are loving it! God's doing beautiful things already.
- We just finished our summer missions teams schedule. It was awesome! Praise report: we saw 26 people give their lives to Jesus!
- It's our third year on the field in LA, and we've seen a slight dip in monthly support. We've bitten off more now adding church planting to the mix, and we need to raise about $800 - $1000 / month. Would you consider helping?
Weekly Church Plant Gatherings 🎉
Friends! Things are on the move. 🫠 🙌 🤩 🙃
It's hard to believe, but we had our first official church plant gathering on May 13: a worship and prayer night at a local coffee shop in Koreatown. A month later, on June 11, we began meeting weekly in that same coffee shop on Tuesday nights for discipleship and community building.
Right now, we're small and loving it. We've been seeing around 15 people journeying with us on these Tuesday nights (though they're not always there at the same time)! Here at the beginning, we're keeping it simple. We study the Bible. We talk about what Jesus is up to in a cultural moment like ours. We play games. We have conversations in small groups and grow in friendship. We eat together and, most importantly, we pray together.
Hands down, church planting is the most exhilarating (and also scariest) new leap of faith we've taken. But...we wouldn't have it any other way. We WANT to live this dependent on Jesus. We have a ton to learn, a long way to go, and lots of community to build before officially launching as an established church (hopefully before Easter 2025!).
But...
God is already working. And it's really beautiful! We celebrate weekly that we're seeing people find renewed purpose, renewed faith, renewed joy, renewed connection with the Church, and renewed hope in the gospel.
...RENEWAL, if you can't tell, is a core concept for our church plant. And soon, we'll tell you all about it! Our church plant's name, vision, heart, ways you can get involved, and all that good stuff we haven't yet shared...it's coming SOON.
Stay tuned! 😇
Summer Missions Teams - That's a Wrap 🤙🤙
Last but not least, church planting and missions go hand-in-hand.
As we're church planting, we're also still hosting summer missions teams where we get to disciple young people, serve the city, and share the gospel. In May and June, we hosted college students from Emmanuel University and summer missions interns from the Awakening.
It's difficult in one paragraph to capture the breadth of what God did across the three weeks these young people were with us (so I'll write a couple more paragraphs 😆). But let me use the word, "awesome," in the honest sense that God continues to "awe" us with his goodness and faithfulness. Both teams were awesome. These young people were awesome and reminded us again that Christ is far from done with his Church (which is also awesome). And the time with them was fruitful in so many different ways. Super awesome!
On that, here's one AWESOME praise report! Across all our evangelistic activities, 26 people gave their lives to Jesus in gospel invitations. 4 adults and 22 kids! …All of whom were Spanish-only speakers, many of whom had only been in the US a short while and are currently staying in shelters in Skid Row, and a number of whom had seen recent tragedies while crossing the US border. Politics aside, this underscores how truly cross-cultural our missions work is here in LA and how Jesus’s gospel is still good news for the poor and the powerless.
But can I level with you? It's more than just the exciting "salvation moments" (which anyone in ministry will tell you don't always happen). It's all the moments in between, too, that we celebrate just as joyfully. Moments that may be harder to report numbers on but are just as crucial to the expansion of Christ's Kingdom. It's students facing fears. Going deeper. Opening up. Giving hugs to homeless people. Laughing with kids who don't speak their language. Laughing at themselves when they try to speak a new language and mess up! Confessing struggles and receiving love, while also growing in love for the world and for the Lord who wants to save it. It's these numerous, unquantifiable "middle" moments -- moments in between the evangelistic exclamation points -- that also become faith altars in students' journeys. Moments they'll look back on and recall how faithful God was. How he stretched them, how he loved them, how he carried them beyond the borders of their comfort zones out further into his compassion and mission to, very literally, save the world.
We always say thank you because with your help these kinds of things happen. The exciting salvations. AND the innumerable hidden things God does in the hearts of young people and in the lives of the poor and lost in the city. Your partnership with us makes it possible for us to live here. Through you, God puts food on our table and sends us out into this broken city needing hope.
Let's keep going!
Missionary Support Still Needed!
Hey, fun fact: did you know Los Angeles is tied for the 4th most expensive city on earth?
We sure do! Just ask us when we're at the gas station paying a minimum of $5 / gallon 😭😱...but LA's insane cost of living also underscores how FAITHFUL God has been to provide for all our needs through churches and people like you!
The 3rd Year Dip: As this is our 3rd year on the field in LA, we’ve seen a slight drop in our missions monthly support. Fluctuating support is common for all missionaries, especially in the summertime and for new missionaries. This is also why most missionaries after their 3rd year return home to re-itinerate and refresh their fundraising. Our situation is a bit different since we’re not planning on returning home to fundraise. Instead, we’re staying in LA and adding church planting to the mix. It’s a lot but we believe God is in it and has called us here!
The Goal: On August 1st, we'll launch a missions fundraising campaign digitally! (We're waiting until August 1, because that date coincides with our missions account transferring from IPHC World Missions into the IPHC Evangelism USA department.)
Here's what we're looking to add and how it will work:
We need to restore our personal support to full by raising around $800-$1000 / month.
We’ll be running a 50 @ 20 campaign (looking for 50 new supporters to support our family as missionaries in L.A. at $20 / month)!
You'll still be able to support us in the same ways: either digitally or via mail. We'll have specfic giving instructions for you on August 1, but don't hesitate to reach out now if you'd like to talk!
Friends would you pray for and consider helping us? Pray for favor and success in that campaign! If you know anyone (churches or individuals) looking for missionaries and/or church planters to support financially, would you consider sharing our information with them?
PS - the partner button below still works if you want to give today!
