Lvoe others

Was this a fast week for all of you? Never enough time it seems to get everything done! But God's work is never done, so we have next week to continue.

We got our week started off great with our breakfast on Saturday. Tim, Sinotra, Myley all helped in preparing biscuits, bacon, eggs and hot coffee. We had a small group but the food went fast. Not much left overs to give away. Join us next month, May 18th.

We had good visits with our friends following breakfast. We even found Richard and he had lots of stories for us! Turner is enjoying his new radio Mr Scott got him, listening to the weather reports every day. Matt and Tim brought several of the guys to the center to wash clothes. Keep Catfish in your prayers, he had a bad week and was not doing well Saturday.

Got a phone call from one of our original group from the Wesleyan community from McNeese College in Lake Charles Monday evening. They want to bring another group the end of May and join in our fun. Very exciting, we have developed great relationships with our first group . Our community will benefit from the new hearts and energy of our new friends. 

Tuesday afternoon, Lomax, Joey, Krysten, Logan and a few others, took the children to Dairy Queen for their field trip, yumm! What a delicious trip that was!

Tuesday evening, Mr Matt led our men's Bible fellowship. Ran out of food because there were so many guys there! More and more men are coming from the various camps. God is working through Tim and Matt as they share their stories with the guys. Very exciting.

Wednesday afternoon, we met a friend at the center to check on our air conditioner units. Our chapel unit was low on freon and we will get that recharged next week. The rest of the units looked ok. God continues to bring folks into our family who want to share their skills with us.

We have lined up our workers for our summer feeding program. All folks from our community, Cornisha, daughter of Vonita, our supervisor, James will be our cook and Jasmine will be our server. This is a great opportunity to give our folks a way to earn some money and provide meals for our community during the summer. Lots of activity will be happening in and around the center this summer.

We talked to our roofer and hopefully in the near future, a new roof will be provided to the Bright House II. The cool thing about our new roof, is we may not have matching shingles! Mr Woods, our roofer is getting the shingles donated and he asked if it was ok if the shingles did not match. We told him, the more color we could get will make our house fit right in!

Thursday afternoon got started off with Abbey and her ladies making grocery bags for the community. We have increased our budget for Mr Scott to purchase more items from the Food Bank. We get more bang for our buck there, so the bags this week was larger than usual, very exciting.

Ms Abbie, Ms Dorothy and a new friend Ms Eloise, led us in music to get our worship started in chapel. Pastor Eddie shared the Word, reading from Psalm 1. Talking about two ways to live. Do we listen to the wicked or do we follow the teachings of the Lord? Mr Tom shared his gifts of cooking and everything was gone by the nights end.

Continue your prayers for Joe and Abbie. Joe came home Monday but is still a long way from feeling his best. Great to have him home, hopefully his recovery will go quicker now. Continue to lift up the Bollingers. Prayers for Mr Scott as he travels to Haiti. Don't know why he continues to go back so many times?! Must be the food or the sunsets! Maybe it's the people? Prayers for the camps as they continue to struggle with the challenges of life. Prayers for us to think of new ways we can bring the Good News to our community.

Matt read from Luke 6 Tuesday evening, talking about loving your enemies and not judging others. Do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you. Don't judge others and you will not be judged. Don't see the dust in your friends eye, without looking at the log in your eye.Hard rules to live by. In fact impossible to follow without Christ in our hearts. 

Our human tendencies are to do the exact opposite. How can we love someone who has wronged us? How can we love someone who calls us names? We can't and I think that is the point. In a world where we live, the world says, do whatever it takes to get ahead. Step over our fellow man, go around our coworker to get to that next step in the corporate ladder. What ever it takes, go for it, no matter who you hurt in the process.

Jesus is telling us, no that is wrong in God's Kingdom. We must lvoe our enemies, we must do good to those who curse us. How do we do that? Because the Holy Spirit is inside of each one of us. It is not mr brian, Momma T, Tim, Abbey that is lvoing others, it is Christ within us. As we begin to allow the Spirit to grow, it will become easier and easier to lvoe others who don't love us. 

Another reminder to me, it is not about mr brian but it is about God. The more we take our selves out of the equation and put Christ in the front, then all things are possible! What a concept! What a way to live and share the lvoe of Christ with others! If we don't do it, then our community will not find it in the world.

Hope your week is full of God's blessings for you and your family. Enjoy every moment, they are special. Amen.

Have you found the Kingdom?

If you don't like the weather we are having, just wait! We hear that phrase a lot in this part of the world. This week was no exception. From beautiful sunshine weather in the 70's on Monday, to wet, cold rain in the 40's on Wednesday. Then back to sunshine and the 60's Thursday. What a ride, hope your week was full of adventures!

We got our week started off with lots of activities on Saturday. Bright and early we had a big group of men from Mr Matt's church, Airline Baptist, mowing, trimming, weeding, cutting the grounds. What a special group of men, having no clue who we are, spending the morning working for us, what a huge blessing they were.

While they were working, some of us made our visits to the camps. Turner is doing fine, talkative for Turner! Robert and his camp were full of humor and stories. Still no sign of Richard. Tim and Matt visited the other camps and concluded their visits with Catfish. Catfish seems to be on the right track and doing much better. Glad to have our relationship going again with Catfish.

Later on in the afternoon, we had our first concert. Two young students from Parkway, members of Brookwood, sang and played the afternoon away,  a blessing to all who attended. What a treat to see young people sharing their talents for Jesus.

Tuesday afternoon, Joey and Lomax took some of the children to a movie for this week's field trip. Everybody had a good time.

Tuesday evening, the men of the community gathered for Bible fellowship. Mr Matt read from Luke 17. We talked about forgiveness, faith, thankfulness and the Kingdom of God. If a follower says he is sorry, forgive him, do we? The disciples asked Jesus, increase our faith, how do we do that? Only one of the lepers came back to Jesus and praise God for healing him, don't we do the same thing, taking God for granted? The leaders of the Jewish nation asked Jesus, where is the Kingdom of God? Jesus said, it is not something you can see or a place where you will say, here it is. Jesus said, God's Kingdom is within you, among you. Each one of you are a part of the Kingdom, because it is in you.

Wednesday afternoon, in the driving rain, the cold weather, Joey, Lomax and I visited a new friend of ours. One of our first interns, Ms Anna had begun a friendship with Joshua at the Yellow house. Joshua has moved not too far from us, so she asked us if we could visit with him to let him know we are a community to help young students like him. Hopefully we will begin a relationship with this young man and help him in his journey.

What an afternoon we had Thursday. About 4:45 I get a phone call from Pastor Willie, saying he was at the doctors office with his wife and could not make it for chapel. Noel agreed to say a few words and as he was preparing, Ms Dorothy sitting down in the back of the chapel began to sing. Then others began to sing and before you knew it the chapel was filled with such sounds of gospel music, you could not believe. Wes came to play the piano, he started playing and more of the community started singing. Just as we were finishing our songs, in walks Pastor Willie. He had us open the doors to the chapel, and more folks from the outside came inside! Unbelievable, what a blessing!

We had a new friend come by Thursday. Ms Jean, who runs Catholic Services from St. Cathrines, came by to see Ms Dawn and visit with us. She wants to see if we can all sit down together and share what each of us do and work together to serve the community. Very exciting to see where this cooperation might lead.

Following our chapel time, we were treated to some new helpers from Grace. The confirmation class joined us and helped, serve, passed out plates, washed the dishes, handed out grocery bags and cleaned the tables. Have never seen so many young people running around helping out. What a great Thursday meal.

Prayers continue for Joe and Abbie. Joe is still in the hospital. His recovery is very slow, trying to gain strength in his legs. He fell just as Joey and I visited with him Wednesday afternoon. So far, no details from the doctors on what caused Joe's seizures. Continue to lift up William and James as they deal with life. Prayers for Ms Dawn as she was under the weather Thursday. 

Remember, next Saturday, the 20th at 8:30 will be our breakfast. Don't want to miss that.

We have been asked by Pastor Eddie, to be one of his sites for a summer feeding program this summer. We are in the process of asking the community to help us run the program. Can't wait to see how it all goes.

Keep thinking about what we read in Luke chapter 17, talking about the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom is not something you will find, or see, but it is inside of us, among us. The center is not a place where you open up a door and find lvoe. You go in this room and find peace. If you sit in this chair, you will experience joy. The Kingdom is not a thing or a place you can see. The Kingdom is you and me. The walls of the center cannot show joy, only you can. The floors cannot provide comfort, only you can. The ceilings cannot show lvoe, only you can.

Folks don't go to Grace for the nice carpet or the comfortable chairs, they go because they have found something special through the people of Grace. The same can be said for our community when they come on Thursdays or Saturdays or any day of the week. They don't come for the white sticky chairs, or the tables all marked up by our creations over the years, they come because they know they will be respected and not judged.

They come because of each one of you are allowing the Kingdom of God to flow through you and show God's special lvoe to all. Thank you for continued passion is serving others and showing all, the Kingdom of God is real and alive in Cedar Grove!

Hope you all have a great weekend and joyous week! Amen.

Rose garden

Wow, it's Friday already! Hope your week was filled with many joys and blessings.

We made our way around to visit our friends who live outside. Turner was doing fine, no sign of Richard again, Robert was busy getting the day off his usual way. Dawn and Scott made the comment, the guys feel at ease with us enough to continue their habits whether it be good or bad. On one hand that is nice but on the other, the addictions continue. Jesus is needed mightily! Smokey was fine. Matt and Tim visited their guys and continue to share the lvoe of Jesus with them.

Easter Sunday morning was started at sunrise like so many before us, in an "egg"celent way! We had a small but faithful group of servants, who walked and hide eggs all over our neighborhood. Again, we saw vacant lots, vacant houses, that need some lvoe trash that needs to clean up, some thank you's from neighbors peering out the doors, what a blessing. Thanks to all for coming out and spreading the light of Jesus in our neighborhood.

Tuesday afternoon, Ms Lisa, Lomax, Mara, and Logan took some of the Small's children to the Norton Art gallery. This time they went inside to show the children all the displays. What a treat, thank you guys for making this happen.

Tuesday evening, Mr Matt and the men of the community gathered for their Bible fellowship. Matt read from Titus chapter 2. Telling us to live our lives in a wise and right way and in a way that shows we serve God. So much of the world needs to see us living a life devoted to Jesus on the streets, in the camps, at the hospitals, in prisons, in our community.

Wednesday evening, Lomax hosted us for our family gathering. Great job Lomax in the preparation of the food, to providing a place where we can learn from each other and tell our stories. Dr Phil led our discussions on chapter 2 and 3 of his book, God works with patterns and Divine Intelligence. One sentence says, For success is not a miracle, it is simply an application of God's principles, working in diving order.

Thursday was another great evening of song, sharing, and food. Heather, Derrick and Richard led us in chapel, Momma T and Abbey supplied the food, new friends from Byrd high school served and cleaned up, Ms Lisa handed out the groceries. Another blessed evening.

Don't forget, we have a free concert in the chapel, Saturday at 2pm. We have Sunday supper at the Ackermans, at 6pm. There is a garage sale going on at Abbey's house, 1901 Horton, Sat morning 6 til noon. Proceeds going to another Haiti trip. Lots going on, come out and enjoy.

Continued prayers for the Bollingers, Cari getting tested this coming week to see if her treatments are progressing like they should. Continue to keep William and James in your prayers. They are trying to work things out for their apartment, while trying to deal with the pull of addictions in William's life. Prayers for safe travel, for Karl and Kelly as they take a trip, for Joey as he returns home after a week in the Atlanta area. Prayers for continued healing for Joe. He is out of intensive care, but struggling with dealing with his illness. Not knowing I think is as worse as knowing. Prayers for his family, that they take of themselves as they take care of Joe. Prayers for Isidora who continues to have back problems. Prayers for our family in Crowley. The youth leader, Julie emailed and said they are wanting to start a homeless ministry. Prayers that God will lead them and guide them in the direction they need to go. A friend of the Grace family, Amand a Sparks in her passing. Prayers for her family as they deal with their loss.

As Richard shared his story in chapel Thursday, he said, Jesus didn't promise us a rose garden. It got me to thinking, life is tough, life is hard, life has many challenges, many storms, how do we deal with them? We can try to deal with them ourselves, worry about them, fuss, get mad, get angry, what does that accomplish? If we try to deal with our storms on our own, then we are setting ourselves up for failure and misery. 

God didn't promise us a rose garden, but He did promise us His Lvoe, if we just accept it. Very simple, uncomplicated, just accept the Lord Jesus Christ as your savior, then we will have some one to turn to in when we reach that wall where it looks like there is no hope. Your wall and my wall will look different. We talked about Wednesday night, no problem is too small or no problem is too big to take to the Lord. We just have to go to Him!

We can not go through life without the presence of Jesus in our lives. Life is too hard. Let's pray together, each one of us today, right now, accept Jesus in our lives. Let us let go of all the things we are holding on to, give it away to the One who is longing for our friendship and respect. What a joy and a blessing we will find, a peace will over come our soul as we begin to experience the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

Have a great weekend and joyous week ahead as we let go and let God in our lives!! Amen and amen.