This is the final update for the LA mission’s trip as the trip ends tomorrow afternoon. The day is finally winding down (Sunday).  Today we did a little of everything.  It all began with our 10:00am church service—which really started at 10:40.  We are finding that everything in this neighborhood/culture runs on its own time.  Mueller would not be happy.  This morning we hosted the service for Jefferson Church.  We did everything from worship—Jordan Harris on guitar, Collin Smith on the plastic bongo, and Jacob Petras on the rain stick (an eclectic mix, but it sounded really good), to Sunday school, to preaching, to PowerPoint and running sound (Mark Verougstraete and Shayne Torres). As the church is bilingual, I preached through an interpreter which is a very difficult task.  It is similar to driving a stick shift without using the clutch. It feels like you are jerking around and never actually able to get into a good flow.  However, God used the message and a lady named Vanessa was still working through the gospel in the evening.

The church is full of sweet people.  I spoke with many of them this morning, and they are simple people who are just beginning to understand the truth of God’s word. The church is full of baby Christians. It was encouraging to be a part of the service and actually see Jefferson Church in action.  Our students did a great job as they sat in a tiny room with the little kids for over 2 hours.  Church is something of a full day event and it goes on for quite a while after the service ended.  We invited some of the laggers on to have lunch with us.

After lunch, we started on our service projects for the day.  These included painting a giant wrought iron fence, painting a tagged wall while standing on the roof, digging out some weeds, making and hanging a permanent sign for the church building (they have none), covering the entire outside wall with sidewalk chalk to promote the church, and cleaning up the inside of the church.  This took most of the afternoon, but the service was sweet and it was done unto the Lord.  Everyone had a great time working and attitudes were still joyful and hardworking.

As dinner approached, we were approached by 2 men (separately). The first was clearly strung out on drugs as seen by looking in his eyes.  He had 3 small kids with him but he was definitely high on something.  He tried to pick a fight with me after I disagreed with him that he wasn’t the Son of God.  But we disarmed the situation, fed his family, and kindly asked him to leave.  The second man was in a wheel chair. His name was Darren and his leg was amputated above the knee. He and I spent about 30 minutes talking, and I walked him over to a local fast food restaurant and bought dinner for him. He lost his leg 20 years ago when he was a gang member (bloods) and he tried to leave the gang. His own people shot him with a shot gun through both legs and stabbed him 5x.  He spent 6 months in ICU before he was released. He has been on the streets for years and I had the opportunity to hear his story and share the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ with him.  It is an eye-opening experience to realize that this was one conversation and one meal with one man. This was just a drop in the bucket.  There is so much need and so few workers.  Brodie has his hands full with these types of situations. But we were able to show the love of Christ to 2 separate men, both of whom need the gospel.

In the evening, we finished up the remaining service projects, and once again were tasked to watch the little kids as Brodie and Katie taught a parenting class.  The biblical pathway to parenting is opposite of the Hispanic culture. In the Hispanic culture, the moms typically let their kids run wild and do whatever they want.  Brodie and Katie are slowly and humbly walking these people through God’s plan for their families.  This class lasted almost 3 hours. It was pretty cool.

The night ended with some cleanup and some general horseplay. This has been a great trip (really, I mean a great trip) and the students will be rewarded with a trip to the beach tomorrow to unwind and have some fun before coming home.  Lord willing, there will be lasting change and fruit that comes from this trip.  It is my prayer that the students would go home different than when they came. They learned to serve, they gave themselves away, and they were pushed outside of their comfort zones in the name of Christ.  I’m glad I didn’t miss this trip and I cannot wait to go back again.  Thanks again for praying and you will be able to get live reports from all of the wacky students coming home tomorrow.

Shawn

From Shawn

The time is 12:37am and the day (Saturday) is finally over.  It has been a long and hot one.  Today we were all put to the test in the area of endurance and being able to withstand prolonged grueling conditions.  We hosted a carnival at the local park.  The carnival was similar to our fall festival.  We began setting up at around 9:00am and were ready to go by the time the 1:00pm start time came around.  Fortunately we had help from some of our FBC friends—The Calhouns, Terry Schleiger, The Adams, Nana (Denise Jensen), and Chris (the muscle) Calvi.  They all made the drive from home this morning and stayed for the entire carnival.  In addition, we picked up the last couple of members of our team today—Hannah and Miriam Sisson.  They were our much-needed reinforcements.

The carnival consisted of 2 jolly jumps (which our students used more than the neighborhood kids), Brett’s Dart Board—popping balloons with darts, fishing for candy, the ping pong ball toss, skeeball, basketball shoot, face painting, balloon animals, and the ever popular “how do you spell Verougstraete?”  We provided hot dogs, drinks, and candy for everyone who came.  The event was received well by the community and we had multiple families for the entire afternoon.  The goal of the event was to get the word out about Jefferson Church and to put a face to the name.  I watched Brodie and His wife Katie work all afternoon.  They talked to so many new people and had opportunities to share the gospel with some of their neighbors.  Lord willing, we will see some new faces at church tomorrow morning.

Once the Carnival ended, we immediately got in our caravan and headed to Mar Vista (a little city near Venice Beach) for an evening celebration featuring Tito’s Tacos—a local favorite.  We ate dinner in Tracy’s parents’ backyard and enjoyed the fellowship and fun that comes from dehydration, overwork, and delirium.  It was our hardest and longest day yet, but it was good to watch students being put to the test with aggravated conditions. They still continued to serve with good attitudes.

Well, I am sitting in some grimy, smelly, sweaty clothes that have been on me since I got up at 6:30am.  Tonight, there is only 1 other person still up.  He is crazy.  Everyone else has retreated to our air-conditioned sleeping quarters to rest up for church tomorrow.  By the way, leaving your computer unattended with multiple high school students around is like leaving a loaded gun on the kitchen table.  After walking away for a few minutes, here is what I returned to find:  The night ended with Jacob Petras (a.k.a. the petrosity, Lil Fetus, Moon Glasses, White Momba) winning Mau with a good “Ooh baby ooh baby ooh baby ooh, Mau.”

Tomorrow we will go to church, which doesn’t start until 10:30 (Praise God!) where our students will serve in the children’s ministry and lead worship.  I am preaching in the main service.  After church, we will do service projects all afternoon, which consist mostly of painting, and then we will be watching the little kids again during an evening parenting class.  It will be a full day.

At this point in the trip, the team has bonded, is working well together, and new friendships are obvious.   It is my hope that these spiritual friendships will outlast this mission’s trip and be part of the indefinite future.  This has been a really solid trip so far. Thank you for praying and please continue to pray for us in these last couple of days.

Shawn

From Shawn

The time is 12:34am.  This room is still hot and muggy.  We have just completed another day of service (Friday) to the Lord at Jefferson Church.  Our day began a little later than yesterday and we enjoyed sleeping in.  Sleep is definitely underrated.  Anyway, after a quick breakfast and time in the word, we began various service projects in the church and in the homes of some of the church leaders.  These homes are owned by World Impact, the missions agency that Brodie belongs to (Brodie is the pastor of Jefferson Church).  About 50 years ago, World Impact purchased space for a building (where the church currently resides) as well as multiple houses in the neighborhood.  This allows the missionaries/church planters to live in the local community and be a part of the neighborhood where he ministers. Brodie’s house is only 3 small blocks from the church.  This foresight was pretty amazing as God is totally using these properties to further His kingdom. Because this is a poverty-level community, the Jefferson Church will most likely never be able to support itself by the giving of its people.  Even if the church tripled or quadrupled in size, there would not be enough money for it to stand on its own.  Hence, Brodie raises support from outside sources and will probably always do so.

The service projects at Brodie’s house included yard work, working in the kitchen, and fixing up some things in the backyard.  At another house, the students stripped the cottage cheese off of the ceiling of one of the main rooms (non-asbestos, of course). At the church, we cleaned the closets, cleaned the entire church facility, reorganized everything, and purchased supplies for painting which we will do on Sunday.  After lunch, we held our second day of VBS.  About 30 kids showed up (many new faces from yesterday) and we had a great time.  It was led once again by Ben and Tammy Adams.  We affectionately named Tammy, “the Wizard,” as she has an amazing gift with children and has been a great addition to our VBS time.  Her Jedi mind tricks had the kids at full attention for almost 3 hours.  Shayne Torres taught on Matt 6:33.  Collin Smith along with Tabitha Howell led the singing.  It was really cool. I sat back and watched all of our students serve and serve and serve.  It is amazing to watch the truth of Scripture come off the page as our students are seeing firsthand what it means to be given wholly to Christ in the area of service.

Before dinner, we drove to the Fred Jordan Rescue Mission. It is only a few blocks from the Midnight Rescue Mission we went to yesterday.  However, the 2 missions are very different.  Midnight is professional, it is large, and its sole purpose is to meet the physical need of an empty stomach.  Fred Jordan is committed to the gospel of Jesus Christ first and then to feeding those in need.  It is really, really cool.  In order to be served dinner, the homeless people must sit through an hour-long chapel service in which the Word is preached.  They served dinner for about 50 people—mostly men.  We were able to help set up for dinner and then hung out for the service.  I had the opportunity to talk with a lady who has been on the streets for many years.  She was crazy.  Seriously.  But after a little probing, she said that everyone in her family was dead—her parents, her siblings, and her son.  All have passed away and she is on her own. Her story was disheartening but not unique. The room was filled with people twitching, physically disabled, and broken from the trials of life.  And yet every person there was confronted with their sin and heard the truth of Jesus Christ.  I am a big fan of the Fred Jordan Mission.  In an environment where every other soup kitchen has accepted government aid and compromised their values, Fred Jordan has done neither.

We left the mission and headed to Brodie’s house for a church bbq.  The people of the church served us dinner and we had a fun time of fellowship together.  After a quick trip to the golden arches for ice cream, we returned to Brodie’s house and spent time around the fire (yes, the fire) singing, praying and hearing Brodie’s testimony.  He shared about how God got a hold of his heart while he was still in HS and after 4 years at Washington State University, he moved back to LA to teach math at a junior high.  It was about 10 years ago that the Lord called him into full-time ministry.  After hearing a John Piper sermon on 1 Cor 15:19 (“If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied”), about living the Christian life in such a way that the world would call you a fool, he made the decision to quit his job and go to seminary.  Upon completing seminary, he took a job as a youth pastor in Burbank.  But still his heart was unsettled and after a few years of faithful ministry there (in which we partnered for 2 or 3 summer camps, FBC & Burbank), he felt the Lord once again moving him, this time to church planting.  He resigned from his position and waited on the Lord.  Through divine providence, a math teaching position opened up at a World Impact school in LA and he accepted the job. To make a long story short, Jefferson Church was born shortly thereafter.  The details of the story are pretty amazing. Our students listened to the story of a real-life radical (or biblical) Christian.  They asked questions and listened to Brodie for over an hour.  I don’t know how to express how powerful his story is.  It is one thing to hear someone talk about radical Christianity, and it is totally different to see someone doing it in real life. Brodie is a stud and I want to be like him when I grow up.

As I write, there is one student looking over my shoulder. He is wearing a beanie even though it is 85 degrees in this room and the humidity level is steadily rising.  There are 2 sets of girls braiding each other’s hair, and there are 5 guys sword fighting with sticks.  For some reason, all of this seems very appropriate. We have reached the level of delirium.  It is time to sign off and get to bed.  Tomorrow is a big day.  We will be hosting a carnival at the local park that is very similar to our church’s fall festival.  We have rented jumpers, have the Chris Mueller Memorial hot dog feed, and will be doing Brett’s blocks all afternoon.  Hopefully, we will be able to share Christ with the community and some of them will even come back for church on Sunday.

The students on this trip make being here an absolute joy.  At the Rescue Mission, we asked for 4 volunteers, and before the words were even out of our mouth, every single hand went up.  It is fun to be part of this team.  Hopefully they will be as given to service in their homes when we return.  Anyway, we will see some of you at the carnival tomorrow afternoon.  Please keep praying.

Shawn

At 2pm on Wednesday, 13 students (Jacob Petras, Rachel and Johanna Calhoun, Jason Clark, Colin Smith, Kaila and James Thomas, Mark Verougstraete, Chad Kuisel, Dan Baird, Tabitha Howell, Shayne Torres, Sienna Umble), 5 staff (Jimmy & Korina Apodaca—the leaders of the trip, Jordan Harris, and Shawn & Tracy Farrell), and 3 small children (Asha Apodaca and Zoe & Haley Farrell) headed to downtown LA to work alongside the Jefferson Church – an urban church plant pastored by Brodie McClain.

From Shawn –

The church is on the corner of a very busy intersection right down the street from USC.  The neighborhood is relatively safe and there are people walking the streets all day long.  The church location could not be better with a ton of street traffic and a great corner lot which is accessible from the neighborhood as well as a very busy street.  The church has been here for about 18 months and is still very much in its infancy stages (although strangely enough it already has its own building).  The makeup of the community is 80% Hispanic, 20% black, and .00001% white (Brodie’s family).  The population density is extremely high here as houses are subdivided and as many as 4-5 families live in a single house.  There are definitely more impoverished and more dangerous areas in LA and there are also nicer and safer neighborhoods as well.  The Jefferson community is somewhere in the middle.   The church is tagged regularly and there are gangs in the neighborhood, but overall it is relatively safe.

After setting up shop last night, we spent 2 hours watching the little children of the church while the adults met for discipleship.   I made a 2 year old named Melvin scream and cry and realized that I stink at working with small kids.  The discipleship groups meet in a way similar to FBC—men with men and women with women.  Most of the church is made up of baby believers but the hearts are soft and change comes quickly to those who love the Lord.  The heartbeat of the leadership of Jefferson is to raise up men and women from within the church to lead, disciple, and eventually plant other small community churches in the neighborhood.  The progress is slow as sanctification is slow.  The progress is slow as the workers are few.  But the team here is committed to making the right choices for both the short and long term future of the church.

This morning we woke up at 5am, had a quick breakfast, and headed through skid row to the Midnight Mission to feed the homeless. On our way through the streets of the city, we passed hundreds of makeshift homes constructed of cardboard boxes, tents, or a simple sleeping bag on the concrete.  Beverly Hills is less than 10 miles away with all of its wealth and opulence.  And yet the streets we drove past were filled with abject poverty.  After arriving at the mission, we were given our tasks—some to scoop rice onto plates, others to scoop apples, and still others to put juice cups and silverware on the trays.  The rest of us cleared the trays after people were done eating.  We served over 600 meals in a little over an hour.  The cross section of people was pretty eye-opening for all of us. We watched single men, single women, and couples, disabled, the blind and even whole families coming in for breakfast.  The imagined picture of a homeless person was quickly replaced by real faces of real people.  We made it through our first homeless encounter unscathed and we will be at a different mission tomorrow serving dinner.  In our small group time this evening, we discussed mercy ministry and its place in the life of the believer.  Compassion was the topic of discussion and each of us realized the grace of God in our lives and our responsibility to help and serve the poor.

After returning to the church, we set up for VBS, and then went door to door passing out fliers for our afternoon VBS.  Ben and Tammy Adams joined us to help run VBS and did a FANTASTIC job.  They were amazing.  About 30 kids from the community came for VBS and then an afternoon movie (Thursday is movie night at Jefferson Church).  Every student was involved with a couple of our guys teaching from the front.  VBS went from 12 until almost 6 and was a great time.  Since then, we have eaten dinner, met in small groups (to pray, sing, and share testimony), and tried to stay cool since the AC in the church is broken and we are sweating like pigs.  Because of the location of the church, it has no windows and therefore is like a sauna—literally.

Our students have been a huge encouragement to me as they have served the Lord with joyful hearts—cooking, cleaning, taking care of kids, serving food, sweating, etc, etc, etc.  They are getting a taste of what it means to give themselves away in the work of the ministry and the excitement is palpable.  God is at work in their hearts and people are changing.  It’s pretty cool.  Well, its late, I am sitting in a pool of my own sweat and we are all pretty tired.  Around me there is a girl reading her Bible, a couple of guys singing worship songs (badly), a game of atomic spoons, and a lot of other general anarchy that is typical of the HS culture.  We are grateful to the Lord for this opportunity and are looking forward to our time tomorrow—work projects, VBS, feeding the homeless.   More details to come!

In the meantime, pray for Jefferson Church, pray for new converts, pray for VBS, pray for our stamina and hearts of service.  We will have much to share when we get home.

Shawn