and He added to their number daily...

i should totally be sleeping right now but i'm just so excited by the events of my night that i just have to get them down on paper and out to you all for prayer and encouragement. over the past months, since about march or so threenails has been meeting in a church in hazelwood. a primarily african american and run down community. the church has only a few remaining members mostly all over the age of sixty and the pastor is ill. when we started meeting there his one request was that we love on his community. we have been meeting there regularly, but there hasn't been a lot of put back into the community and tonight was probably our last night there as we move onto to something else.

not long into the service i decided to go outside to relieve one of the 3N parents that had come with kids in tow with too much energy to sit in a hot church. could i have stayed inside and gone through the prayers of the people and the nicene creed with my friends. yeah, i could have. and it probably would have been edifying. but damn, what happened instead was so God breathed i couldn't imagine things going down any differently. the kids and i ran around in the grass getting dizzy and tackling each other and laughing and soon we found we had more and more company. kids from the neighborhood started coming into the gate and they were all for joining in. more kids came and a friend nate from 3N had come out to play too. we spent most of the gathering the two of us playing duck duck goose, red light green light, tag, hide and go seek, you name it with these kids and the response was nothing short of what i'm sure God deems as beautiful. they latched on to this friendship idea and they were so hungry for love they ate it up in gob fulls and the feeling was mutual. it was bittersweet as i watched them running around and laughing, wishing tonight was not our last night there, and that this hadn't happened sooner. that i couldn't promise them we'd be back next week.

this is what i want to do with my life. to spend my time loving people, building relationships, and use what little resources i have to bless others. i drove nate home tonight and we decided we were definitely up for going back and maybe making a regular thing of being in the church yard on sunday afternoons to play, and kids could expect to find us there, which could lead to lots of talks with their parents or whoever is always sitting out on their front porches, and neighbors passing by who want to know why those white kids are in the running around in the grass with the little ones.

please pray for hazelwood. for devine, and leon, ree ree, the others whose names i never caught. pray for their families and for good shepard. that young leaders would rise up in this community and that a ripple effect would move through homes and His love would be known...even through a game a of duck duck goose.