80's Birthday Party

We had a fun night last night celebrating our good friend Shirley's birthday.

Africa Hope Center Pics

My friend Joseph just arrived in Kenya this week to be there for the summer and sent me these pics:

Prayers for Africa Hope Center

This is an attempt to make a long story short in the midst of studying for exams. During my time at Fuller, God has burdned our hearts for orphans in Africa. We've been studying, learning, and building relationships to best understand how we can partner with churches in Africa to care for orphans in a holistic way. One of my prayers has been God would lead me to people I can trust in the church in Africa to multiply their efforts to care for kids that have no future or hope because of the devastation caused by the AIDS crisis. In Kenya alone, 1/4 of the adult population has died from AIDS and has left over 4 million orphans just in that country. The current number of 15 million orphans in Sub-Saharahan africa is expected to rise to 20 million by 2010. Can you even fathom that number of kids without home and care?

Anyway, over the last year I have built a great friendship with a pastor from Kenya who is getting his PHD at Fuller studying how the church in Kenya can best care for orphans holistically. His church began by taking in 5 orphans who lost both their parents to AIDS in Nairobi, Kenya, and now are caring for 80 kids in rented flats and church facilities. They have been raising money to buy a property that can become a holistic orphan care sanctuary for over 100 kids. The entire price of the property is just over 40,000. They need 23,000 down to buy it and they raised 15,000 on their own. I've helped them raise 6,000 more toward that effort and we are just 2,000 dollars short of being able to buy the property which is a huge need and an exciting stage to be involved in actually making a difference in bringing hope to kid's lives.

My friend, Jason, one of the pastors of the new church community we are joining with this fall, and I are going this summer, August 1-15, to build continue building a relationship with Joseph, see the situation firsthand, and see how God is continuing to lead us in future partnership.

Right now, I am trying to help him develop a web-site to give on-line and raise the remaining 2,000. I need $550 for the web-site and 2,000 to help him buy the land.

This would mean about 20 people giving 100 bucks, 200 people giving 10 bucks, or 10 people giving 200 bucks, or 20,000 people giving 10 cents. Anybody interested in helping?

The best way to give is either to write a check directly to Africa Hope Center or to Visio Dei (church in Raleigh) and designate for Africa Hope Center, and then they will write the check collectively.

The two addresses can be found on www.africahopecenter.org or www.visiodei.org

Thanks for considering making this is a reality

Peace

CP

Lo-Lo growing up

Now I know what they mean by time flys. I love my little girls!

Great Day at Malibu

We had a really great day spending time with Jon Michael at Malibu. He came in town so we decided to make a trip out there for the first time. Hannah warmed up to the ocean until she got soaked with a wave.

Today, first time in the ocean. Tomorrow, first time in a movie theater. We're taking her to see Shrek.

Uncle Bernie

Wednesday night, we had a great time with Uncle Bernie. The funny thing is we've known each other since college, but didn't get to be good friends until last year. Hannah loves Ber-Ber, and we had a lot of fun eating some great food, talking about our time at Fuller, and future dreams for Raleigh. Crazy thing is, he'll be living 3 miles from us in Raleigh-- so the girls will get to see a lot of him. We're so grateful to have people like Bernie in our life who care about us deeply.

good food
good times

good friend
good cheezy labels for pictures

Two Answered Prayers

After the post the other day about the many floating details in our life right now that are coming together, we had two significant ones happen in the last two days---

Less exciting first--- two people came by our apartment here in Pasadena and want to buy most of our stuff here-- so that is coming together

Two- we bought a house in Raleigh! Yet, another amazing ability with technology. We were able to find and purchase the house within 24 hours. The house fits just with our vision for Raleigh. We wanted to either find a place in the middle of the city in a diverse, yet ungentrified area or else find a place right outside the city that could be a great place of hospitatlity and refuge of healing for ministry in the future as Danielle has become very passionate about the human trafficking issue, or else we were possibly looking at buying a place with my sister and Matt. We found this house online, Traci looked at it, and it fit with what were thinking, so we decided to make this decision easy. It even has an apartment in the basement as a potential housing place for people. I still can't quite believe we found a house this great in the location that it is. We pray that it would be used to bless many people during our time in Raleigh.

Here are some pics:






While we've loved California in many ways, we are looking forward to getting back to the green east coast! Although the nights right now are tough to beat in LA.

Pics of the Week and Prayer Request

Hey everybody,

We would like you guys to pray for us as we are in the midst of a very big transition in our life and are juggling many pieces. Our life is very full right now as we are moving toward an exciting future in Raleigh, NC. Along with that comes the need for great thoughtfulness, discipline, and intentionality.

Right now, in addition to school and our family, we are juggling about 10 other things for the move:

- my trip to africa (august 1-15) and trying to raise $2000 more dollars to help them buy a piece of property for the orphan care sanctuary
- danielle's involvement with human trafficking ministry
- ministry at Mosaic
- filing paperwork with the IRS to start my non-profit organization
- coordinating the development of the website
- selling our home in Williamsburg and the details that go along with that with our stuff
- looking for homes in Raleigh
- selling and giving away our things here(I just packed up our books this weekend)
- possibly going on staff with an incarnational church planting/ leadershp development ministry (I am meeting with the guy this week)
- dreaming and planning with friends in Raleigh about discipleship within Visio Dei

Our tickets are bought for July 19!!!! So, it is coming soon, and we are doing a little bit of these things every day. We actually feel at peace in the midst of all these things, like God is moving in just at the speed and direction we need to go, but we also need to be lifted up during this time because we have so many moving pieces. We're getting to spend some good times with friends today, and Dave and Betsy were amazing today allowing me and Danielle to go on a date.

We had a great mother's day today and spent time this weekend as a family. The sabbath discipline of family time has helped me develop a rhythm to life since we've been here.

I also played in a 3 on 3 tournament last night and guarded a 6'10, 280 lb. guy that couldn't handle me ! (ha)

Here are some of the sweetest pics you've ever seen----

An Uncomfortable Bank Encounter (by Danielle)

We went to the bank the other day with both girls. Shiloah was strapped to my chest and Hannah rode happily in the single stroller. Corey went ahead in line to deposit a check and I waited in the lobby with the girls, making sure to stand so that Hannah could still see her "CoreyDaddy." Then the bank manager came over.
She is always very nice and smiley when we come in, and the folks there seem to recognize us because of the girls. Usually the manager is behind her desk but today she decided to venture over to us. She proceeded to talk to Hannah, touch her head and her hair, her cheeks, her hands and the stroller. Then she moved on to Shiloah, lifting up her hat, commenting "Oh, you're not so cute, but your sister sure is!" (This is added to the exceeding long list of Stupid Things People Say to You When You Have Kids.) I was understandably annoyed.
Then she went back to cooing at Hannah, touching her still. Hannah started saying "No, girl. No, girl." and shaking her head away from the woman's touch. I stood there and tried to smile, not sticking up for my young daughter who was trying to communicate to this woman that she didn't want to be touched anymore! My dilemma was that I didn't want to upset the woman, make her angry or offend her. Instead I subjected my 22 month old daughter to something she was uncomfortable with. I left there feeling sick to my stomach.
I can't believe I would do that! I am still sick to my stomach about it. Corey and I made a pact that we would not do that ever again. It happened to us once before, and we vowed never again.
Obviously, the feelings of my beautiful little girls are more important than the feelings of this boundary-crossing bank manager. I walked by the bank today, secretly desiring to go back and recreate the situation so that I could make up for my mistake.

What if you were on PBS?

One of my good friends at Fuller stopped by yesterday and told me he might be on PBS next year for a documentary they are doing on "the call." It's a documentary on four different types of seminaries training peple for religious leadership--buddhist, jewish, muslim, and christian. The lady from PBS went to one of Paul's classes, and because Paul was one of the only people talking openly in class- she asked him if he might want to be on the show--- Crazy. Well, this is a little exciting and scary for Paul because she would basically follow him around with a camera for a while and he would represent Christians in leadership training for the nation--

Sometimes, I catch Hannah just looking at me, and then imitating me, and I think about all the people I come in contact with every day that I have an impact on--even if you are like PBS and not many people watch you, someone does (ha)

What would people see if your life became the PBS show? your attitudes? the things you care about? your relationships? your free time?

I think the PBS effect is something we need to evaluate our life by on a regular basis. In a culture where the Christian message is mass-marketed into a product or else marginalized as irrelevant, we need to reclaim the reality that our lives are the message about God to the world. We are often guilty of making an idol of religious leaders, books, conventions, church numbers.

We need to claim the reality of the ordinary person and community being the revolutionary message of Christ to the world. What if churches were known for Christ's character being so evident among the people serving and bringing hope to others rather than the name of the pastor or sign in front of the building? One of the central differences between the movement of Jesus and other religions is that Jesus is alive in the lives of ordinary people to reflect His character in the world.

"You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts and read by everbyody. You show that you are a letter from God. He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant---not of the leter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life...Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you--unless of course you fail the test?" II Cor 3:2-3; II Cor 13:5

Paul's words are written to whole communities--- it is easy to hide or deceive ourselves as individuals, we need each other to grow and change, dream, imagine, and live a different reality--