#10 Playgroup!

In my last two posts I talked about how I worked for Cleveland Hope for two years as a US/C2 missionary and during that time my husband and I joined a team to help start Bridge Church at Perry.  Well after my two years at Cleveland Hope were over I needed another job, and it worked out that because Bridge was a new church they could receive funding to help employ a US/C2 missionary to help with the work in Perry.   So I signed up for another two years as a US/C2 missionary and basically got paid to do my dream job at Bridge Church.  (I didn't get paid a whole lot, but it did come with a great insurance package for me and Darin so it was well worth the small salary to get to do what  I love and not have to buy our own health insurance.)

While I worked for Bridge I was in a support staff role with a focus on preschool ministry and helping with the youth.  I also did whatever else I was asked to do, but those were my focus areas.  One of my assignments was to focus on outreaching to preschool families, so I decided to start a weekly playgroup for the moms in our community.  I had helped with some playgroups at the church I worked at in Australia, it was one of my favorite ministries I got to participate in during my time there, and that is how I got the idea to start a playgroup in Perry.  There was one key problem however, at that time I had no child to bring with me to playgroup.  So I felt a little weird about advertising for people to come to this playgroup and bring your kids to hang out with this lady who has no children.   It could have been really awkward....  Thankfully however I did have some great ladies at Bridge Church who did have children and were excited about this outreach opportunity and a chance to connect regularly with other ladies who had small children.

Barb, the saint who hosted every week for months!

So I got the ball rolling on this ministry with three ladies from church, Jodi, Elizabeth and Barb (and their kids.)  In the beginning we met every Wednesday afternoon at Barb's house.  She was a saint to let us use her house every week!  We were going for consistency with location as we were advertising this in the community but man looking back on this I realize what a hard thing that is to have something at your house every week. If you ever read this Barb, I'm sorry you had to host it every week that first half of the year, and I'm so thankful for your generous, giving spirit!

Elizabeth and I at the summer Luau.

We had so much fun getting to know each other during those first few months. We were pretty organized in the beginning as well. We would take turns doing a game, a story, a craft and bringing snack.  We started to slowly add some other people as well.  Kris Vonburg joined us that Spring, she had just moved to the area and was looking to connect with other moms and kids.  She was a joy to get to know and was always willing to host playgroup anytime we needed a house (you know after we decided to not make Barb host it every week!)    We also added Becky, Amy, Laura, Stacy, Jeanette and Mary over the next 6 months.  In fact the group got so big that by the fall we split into two groups for awhile because the amount of kids would have been overwhelming to just have one group.  That first summer instead of having it at someone's house we planned weekly field trips to places like Indian Point, various beaches around the area, parks and other fun spots to take kids.  It was a really fun summer, probably one of my favorite summers since we have been at Bridge Church. We built a great community and it was cool because some of the ladies with older school age children were able to come and join in the fun.

Landon and Chase, best friends forever!

During those first few months of playgroup I found out that I was going to have a baby to bring to playgroup!  I remember I got to go to a playgroup meeting right after we had our first doctor's appointment that confirmed the pregnancy with an ultrasound and we were ready to start telling people.  So those ladies were some of the first people I got to tell (besides family).  I remember I was standing in the kitchen talking to Jodi and Becky and I mentioned I had been to the doctor and Becky said, "Why what's wrong with you?" I said, "Nothing, I'm just pregnant!"  Then I will never forget Jodi started jumping up and down, clapping her hands, squealed and gave me a huge hug.  It was the absolute best reaction I ever have gotten when telling someone I am expecting.   It made me love her even more to know how excited she was for us. (We also got to find out a few weeks later that Jodi would be having a little boy not long after Landon was born. We said they would be best friends, and we were right!)  The other ladies of course were excited about my news as well.  Barb came in and said I heard squealing and I bet I know why (her husband Jake is my hair stylist and he had picked up on a few things so I knew he suspected but he was gracious enough to let us keep our secret until we were ready to tell.)

Jodi and Luke at playgroup.

It was so wonderful to be able to share that news with those ladies that I had come to love so much and build a really special relationships with that year.  They were all such a wonderful support to me during my pregnancy, in my early months of learning to be a mom and even now they continue to be a huge source of encouragement during those rough mommy moments.  They helped throw my baby shower, gave me lots of good advice and were just wonderful examples of what God honoring mothers look like.

In December of that first year of playgroup Landon was born and I finally had a child to bring to playgroup.  I no longer was eyed suspiciously by new women who were wondering why this childless women was helping to run a playgroup.  When Landon was about 8 months old I started taking him to baby time at the library.   I got to connect with quite a few women who also had just had their first child.  However I was having a hard time moving beyond just a surface, relationship with anyone, because you only saw them for a half an hour once a week.  I remember our Valentines party for playgroup was coming up and I decided to make up invitations and  pass them out to the ladies at story time.  We always tried to do really fun holiday parties for the kids.  Two of the ladies I invited, Shelly and Cristie came that first day with their kids (even though I know it was cutting into nap time).  I'm so glad they did, they both ended up becoming some of my really great friends and supports during these first few years of discovering how to be a mommy.  Landon and I did mommy and me swim lessons with Cristie and her little boy.   Shelly and I discovered we both liked to ride bikes and we would have bike riding playdates with our husbands and kids.  Its pretty cool because now our husbands, Mike and Darin have become good friends.  We also all got to experience having our second child within the next year or so. Cristie went first, then Shelly and I was the last one to add number two.  So I got to watch how they did it and take notes from them!

I'm so thankful for all the ladies that I've been able to connect with through playgroup over the past 4 years.  There is too many to mention them all but they have all been great friends and are wonderful, loving mothers.  This past year we didn't end up having it, schedules got busy, life got overwhelming and it just didn't work out.  I hope we can get it started again one day. It was a great opportunity to connect and I always really enjoyed doing it.  Its great to get to be around a group of women where you can be real and honest and not have to hide your mommy failures. You get to hear how you're not alone and we all mess up but we try to do better the next time.  I love having friends that you don't have to worry about getting the "judging mommy looks" and I'm thankful for how playgroup has allowed me to connect with those kind of women. 
 

#11 Starting Bridge Church

I mentioned in my last post that at Cleveland Hope one of our jobs was to help start churches in the Greater Cleveland Area.  Before coming to Cleveland I had very little exposure to church planting.  I heard it talked about some at my home church but that was the extent of my exposure. However, when I started at Cleveland Hope I was pretty much immersed in the outer realms of the church planting world.  What I mean by that is that I started meeting a lot of church planters, I began learning about some of the important things a church plant needed and I got to be a part of helping church plants find partner churches to support them.  Even though I was serving in a support role to many church planters, I wasn't really involved in the daily on the ground type work that church planters do.  I did eventually start to go to one of the churches planted by Cleveland Hope. It was called North Pointe  and was led by some fabulous people, Joe and Becky Ciresi, Mark and Karey Leist and some other terrific families.  It became my home church for a few months and I did try to get involved in serving in the nursery on occasion and helping out at an outreach when I could, but the busyness of my job didn't allow me to be much more involved than that.

Jeff and Julie

About 6 months into my time in Cleveland, Darin came into my life and to keep the story short (I'll give the longer version in a later post, its a top 5 life experience) he swept me off my feet, we decided to get married and that he would move to Cleveland so I could finish my time at Cleveland Hope.  However, he needed a job up here.  He had been involved in church planting in southern Ohio and since I was so connected to the church planting center in Cleveland it seemed like maybe we should explore some possibilities of church planting in Cleveland.  As I mentioned before, my very good friend Brad Graves was looking out for us and he sent Darin's resume to a guy named Jeff Calloway who was planting a church in a small town east of Cleveland.  I still remember the day I drove out to what is now my home town to deliver t-shirts to Jeff and the mission team he had working with him.  I knew he had gotten Darin's resume but I didn't want to bring it up and seem "unprofessional".  However Jeff was not about to let me leave without teasing me a little bit.  He said right as I was about to take off, "So Brad sent me this guy's resume as a possible worship leader, apparently he's dating one of the girls at Cleveland Hope.  Do you know anything about that?"  All professionalism left me at that point and I said "Yeah, that's my boyfriend! He's awesome, you should hire him!"  Okay so I didn't say that last part, but I did tell him it was my boyfriend and that we were very serious and he was wanting to move up here so we could get married.  I went on to find out that Jeff was very interested in talking to us and he proceeded to tell me to go drive around and check out the area.  I still remember that first drive around what is now my home town.  The neighborhood we were in is actually where many of our very close friends live.  I went to see the schools, checked out a few of the neighborhoods and as I was pulling out of the driveway from the school's campus (which is so close to where we now live) I knew in my heart that God was telling me this is where we were going to live.  As crazy at it may sound it was love at first site for me with this town (which is funny because while I still think it is a nice town, I don't know that most people would fall in love with it on their first visit.)

That weekend Darin came to visit me and we got to go out and meet with Jeff and his wife Julie at their home.  Jeff and Julie are wonderful, down to earth people who are sold out for Jesus. They have two great daughters Sarah and Emily who we also got to meet that day.   They made us feel so welcome in their home and it was great to hear the passion and excitement in their voices as they talked about planting Bridge Church.  The meeting went great and by the end Jeff had pretty much offered Darin the job without even hearing him sing or play the guitar! Pretty crazy since he was hiring him to be the worship leader. He did tell him to send him an audition tape but he also told Darin that when he moved up he could live in their basement until he was able to find a place to live. A job offer and a place to live after one meeting and again not having heard the potential worship leader sing! Needless to say Darin and I were excited and definitely seeing God's hand at work. 

After a few failed attempts we finally did get Jeff the audition tape and it was official, Darin would be the worship and small group pastor for Bridge.  I think this was all settled less than two weeks after we started talking to the Calloways.  Darin moved up to Cleveland and into the Calloway's basement a couple of weeks later and we became a part of the Bridge Church launch team.

In September we got to meet some of the other families who would be helping us start the church.  It was three families Jeff had known from his previous church.  The first family I remember meeting was Patrick and Jennifer Jesberger and their daughters Kayla and Kristen.  We were having a cookout and meet and greet with some of the families from the community who were interested in being a part of the new church start.  I also met Gregg, Cindy, Ryan and Laura Sadler that night as well as Tom, Martha, Spencer and Brittany Lang.  Calloways, Jesberger, Langs, Sadlers and Avery's were the 5 families  that would make up our initial launch team.  In October we started meeting in the Calloway's home on Sunday mornings and we continued to do that until we launched the church in late January.  That was such a special time for me.  It was so intimate and special getting to know these families with whom we were about to begin a very special journey.  It was totally relaxed, just Darin and his guitar and Jeff and his Bible.  I still remember Jeff teaching from the book of Acts while sitting in that big armchair in their living room every week.

Slowly we started adding more families.  Some through the preview services, and some through other connections in the community.  We sent out mailers, we had billboards, we did servant evangelism projects and hosted 5th Quarters after football games with the Fellowship of Christians Athletes.  We did everything we could think of to let people know this new church was starting and we wanted them to be a part of it.  It was hard work, but it was rewarding and we were blessed to see God's hand at work in many ways.  We launched our weekly public services on a snowy Sunday in mid January with almost 100 people in attendance.

Darin and I were also especially blessed to have Jeff and Julie to mentor us as we started out our marriage and life in ministry. They are such a great example of a God-honoring couple.  They showed us what it meant to work hard but also make sure you took time for each other and your family.  They loved on us and made us a part of their family.  As I mentioned Darin lived with them for about a month when he first moved here but after he moved out they let me come out and stay with them on the weekends so I could be closer to Darin and not have to get up super early to drive to church on Sundays.  I did that from October until Darin and I got married in February.  We continued to be a regular at the house, sharing the occassional meal or holiday if we weren't able to travel home.  After Darin and I had Landon they watched him many Monday nights for almost the first year of his life so Darin and I could have still have date nights.

Being part of starting Bridge has been one of the greatest experiences of my life and part of what has made it so great is the awesome people I have gotten to meet because of this wonderful church.  I have learned so much from the people we've worked with about what it means to be faithful to what God has called you to do and be willing to make sacrifices.  I saw the Jesbergers drive 25 miles or more one way to help us start this church.  It wasn't  only on Sundays either, they were a part of a small group, they were at every servant project, and they took great care of the finances (which is no easy task in any church, but especially not in brand new church where you have to star everything from scratch.)

Tom and Martha worked tirelessly and faithfully despite Tom having to work 80 hours a week and Martha having to work and take care of various family members including her mother who lived with them.   They are always willing to serve at any task big or small and God has used them to be part of the back bone of Bridge Church.  They also have two of the best kids I've ever met who like their parents are servant hearted and always willing to help wherever needed. The Langs have become some of our closest friends over the past 6 years as they have stood by us and the church through some very tough times.  Darin and I both agree you would be hard pressed to find a couple as great as the Langs.

Cindy and Laura were some of the first people to meet Emmy!

It took me a little longer to get to know the Sadlers but they became very dear friends over the years who have helped us in many ways not the least of which has been help in providing babysitting services.  My son was so attached to Cindy that she was the only person he would just leave and go places without giving even a backwards glance or goodbye to mom and dad.  Cindy even took care of Landon the night we were in the hospital having Emmaline.  It gave me such peace to know he was being well taken care of by someone he loved so much and he wasn't missing mom and dad.

I got to see a lot of servant hearts during our years at Bridge. The men were (and some still are) there every week setting up and tearing down.  It is no easy task lifting all the heavy equipment.   During the first year of the church, Jennifer, Martha, Julie and I worked every single week in the children's ministry.  Julie actually did it longer than the rest of us, she probably did it closer to two full years.  It was hard but everyone had the attitude that this was what God was calling us to do and we would do it.   It's funny as hard as it was to not get to be in the service I do treasure that time working with those ladies and the children we had in our class every week.  We really got to build some special relationships during that time.

Besides our core launch families God has blessed our church family with so many wonderful people.  I can't begin to name them but its just been so cool to see how he has brought us so many wonderful people.  Some of them, like the Steve and Jodi Sivon, weren't on our launch team but they came to our first launch service, continued to come every week after and have become a integral part of our church family.  There were other families that might not have been there on our launch Sunday but came in the weeks and months after and have been such a blessing to my family and our church as a whole. I really don't know what I'd do without having people like the Youngs, Ortizs, Penroses, Sandors, Burt and Janine Sivon, Hodkinsons, Duncans, Strnisas, Gauntners, Bonnemas (the whole clan), Steeles, Makselans, Mahers, Walkers, Kostners, Harshaws, Mehls, and so many others. (I'm sure I've forgotten some, please forgive me if it was you!) 

One of the harder things about being a part of a church plant is that you don't always get to keep everyone who comes into your church family.  Being a part of a new church is hard work and it's not for everyone.  There are many people who have come and left and its been really hard to watch them move on, some because of relocation or a call to a different ministry, others because of differing views or disagreements, (those are always the hardest).  It's heart breaking to lose a part of your church family. Darin always describes it as a tearing effect, like you are losing a body part (because in essence you are).  Its always painful and it never seems to get easier.  Honestly, I hope it never does get easy to watch people go, I want to feel the hurt because then I know that I have done my best to truly love those people while they have been in our church.  There are moments that I find myself wishing some of them will come back but there are others that I see God's hand in moving them onto something different so I'm at peace with it.  I still love all those people though and I'm thankful for the impact they had on my life while they were a part of Bridge.

There was one loss that was harder than any of the others.  In our first year at Bridge we lost a man who had been with us from very early on.  He was our bass player on the praise team and a wonderful Godly man, Hank Patricy.  It was horrible losing Hank and knowing that he had left behind a wife and 5 children.  However even in that horrific loss I believe God used it for His glory.  There were many who came to Christ because of Hank's life and devotion to Christ. Many of them were young boys who Hank had coached and Darin got the privilege of discipling them in our youth ministry. We even saw some of their moms and dads come to Christ.   It didn't lessen the pain of the loss but it did bring joy and hope in the midst of that valley we walked through with the Patricy's.  In that situation I learned I won't always understand God's ways and purposes, but I don't have to understand, I just have to be faithful and trust in Him.

Mission Trip to Michigan with our awesome students!

My next few posts will be about certain special parts of our time at Bridge. There have been so many, Bridge Church has been with Darin and I as we've gotten married and had both our children.  We are still here at this church we helped start 5 and half years ago.  Darin actually just celebrated his second anniversary as Senior Pastor of the church.  Two years ago God moved Jeff on to be a part of a broader ministry focused on church planting all over Cleveland. It has been very cool to see how God has blessed Jeff's work and how Darin has been able to do something he is so passionate about, preaching every Sunday and leading the church as God leads him.  We definitely feel like we are exactly where God wants us to be.  Darin started as the worship and small groups pastor but soon after we began he switched to worship and youth.  That was a fun adventure in our life.  We love the students we were able to build relationships with during that time.  It was challenging but also very rewarding to watch some of those young people turn into these awesome men and women with hearts for the Lord.  Our prayer is that Bridge will be able to continue to see  people come to know Christ as Lord and Savior and serve Him their whole lives.  We're praying daily that Bridge would be faithful to plant the gospel seeds in our community and that God would allow us to be a part of reaping a harvest for His kingdom that will transform this community and the surrounding areas for His honor and glory.  We thank God for allowing us to be apart of this wonderful church family and we pray we will remain faithful to Him as we serve here.

To end this post here's a few more pictures from our Sports Camp we did this summer.  It was such an awesome week and  I couldn't end this post without including a few pictures. It technically happened a month after I turned 30 but I decided since this is my blog I can post them if I want to. ;)

#12 Cleveland Hope

I graduated from college with a business degree in marketing.  Most of my peers were getting their first "real jobs" doing sales for insurance companies or other sales firms where you have to make cold calls all the time and your salary is almost solely (if not completely) based on commissions. Yuck!!!!  It makes me sick to my stomach just to think about it.  It also makes me sick to think about how close I came to taking one of those cold calling, commission only sales jobs.

After I got back from Australia it was time to enter the real world. I had graduated and had my fun summer overseas and now it was time to enter the workforce.  Technically I had been in the workforce all through college but I was ready to do something more than work 15-20 hours a week at Payless Shoesource.  I went on three interviews that I can remember.  I got offered one job, and it was to drive around cold calling on any kind of business you could find to see if you could sell them office supplies.  You only got paid commission off of what you sold at that time.  I asked them to give me a few days to think about it after they offered me the job and I went home and started praying, asking God what I should do.  When the morning came that I needed to give them an answer I still did not feel great about it but I had no other options.  I asked God that morning to show me if He wanted me to take the job or if He had something else for me.  Right after I prayed I went to check my email and discovered an email from a friend of mine, John Bailey, about Cleveland Hope.  It was a two year missionary job in Cleveland Ohio working with a Strategic Focus City coordinating volunteers to come and serve with churches in the Greater Cleveland Area.  I discovered that morning that John had been emailing the Director of Missions in Cleveland, Randy Chestnut, about me and checking to see if they had any jobs available.  John had forwarded me their email exchange and the link for the application and contact people.  It sounded promising and I knew that even though it wasn't a clear job offer, God had shown me He had something for me other than the sales job!     

In the next few days I got to talk to the person who would end up being my future boss and dear friend, Kim Edwards.  I discovered that Cleveland had been chosen by the North American Mission Board (NAMB) to be a Strategic Focus City (SFC).  That meant that NAMB was putting a lot of resources into setting up an initiative in the city to help strengthen the existing churches and start new ones.  The currently had about 8 staff members in place and were looking to hire about 4 more support staff whisch would most likely be recent college graduates.  I heard the job description for the Mobilizations Associate and it sounded like a great fit.  Apparently Kim and the Executive Director, Bob Mackey, thought I would be good as well because they pretty much offered me the job after my first interview.  They did make it clear that I would have to go through the NAMB application process (which I believe I had already started) but as long as everything went well the job sounded like it was mine.

This whole process took a few months. I started talking with the people in Cleveland in August, went on the interview at NAMB in Atlanta in October and starting work January 2, 2006.  There were two other girls that were hired for Associate positions similar to mine.  We all got to meet in Atlanta in October and it turned out Amber, the Communications Associate, actually lived in the town right next to my home town!  Our churches were in the same Baptist Association and we probably had even played in the associational volleyball league against each other in high school.  When we met Leah, who would end up being the Sports Evangelism Associate, in Atlanta she did not know that she would end up in Cleveland. She was just applying to be a two year missionary somewhere in the United States or Canada.  However in January the 3 of us found ourselves in the freezing, gray, Cleveland Ohio living about a 20 minute drive from Lake Erie.  I kept hearing  the lake called the "Snow Machine", it was not a comforting term. I kept thinking what have I gotten myself into??!!

Thankfully what I gotten myself into was a whole lot of fun!  For two years I got to work with some of the most fun, talented people I have ever met.  In those two years I got to see God work in some amazing ways.  The first thing I saw His hand at work in was my relationship with Amber and Leah.  Remember we had only been around each other about 2 or 3 times before we started at Cleveland Hope and not only were we working with each other for about 45 hours or more a week we were also living with each other!  We were all US/C2 missionaries and that just means a two year missionary in the US or Canada.  However they were stipend positions so we didn't make a whole lot in our paychecks but the organizations we worked for were required to pay for our housing expenses.  So to cover our housing expenses they put the three of us up in a house one of the local churches owned, it was called "the mission house."   Now we were all a little nervous about this arrangement.  What if we didn't like each other?  We were going to be together all the time. We went from barely knowing each other to basically living the same lives.  It was scary but I think there was a lot of prayer surrounding this situation, probably from all three of us and our families as well as the Cleveland Hope staff.  Thankfully, God was at work. We were all very different from each other, different interests, different personality types but we bonded quickly and we became great friends. We ended up having a lot of fun living and working together.

When I think about Leah and Amber and our time living and working together what stands out to me is all the time we spent laughing!  I remember being at home laughing, being at work laughing, at church, in restaurants, the car, pretty much wherever we were there was a lot of laughing going on when we were together.  We had some crazy adventures trying to find our way around the city. One time early on we thought there was an intruder in the house when we were all downstairs and we heard a loud noise upstairs. Leah and Amber made their way upstairs with a lighter and a bottle of aerosol hairspray.  I was waiting at the bottom of the stairs with a cellphone and the car keys in hand should we all need to make a quick escape. (Yes I know, I'm the chicken in the group.)  We never found anything and we still don't know what that noise was.  Another time Leah and I were home and heard something strange so Amber came home to find us eating with a bunch of large knives on the table in case an intruder made an appearance.  I still remember the look on her face when she walked in!

Besides Amber and Leah we got to work with a few other "Associates" or peons as we referred to ourselves.  Ihor was the church planting intern and a native Clevelander.  He had just graduated from college and was planting a Ukrainian Church  while he worked for our Church Planting Director, Brad Graves.   Ihor was our only friend for awhile and he was nice enough to hang out with us and show us around Cleveland.  He was a lot of fun and had the best sense of humor. He could say anything and keep a straight face.    Micah was the Evangelism Associate and he started about a month after we did.  I'll never forget the look on his face when I gave him all the information about the city-wide VBS he was responsible to coordinate.  He said "I didn't know I was going to be coordinating VBS." He was shocked when I told him that was the only definite thing I had even heard he would be doing.  (Although he did end up doing more than VBS.) Micah had a great wife named Kara who was a lot of fun to hang out with. It was nice to expand our girlfriends to more than just the three of us.

The Peons all discovered that we loved The Office and it was fun trying to compare people in our office to the characters on the show or trying to imagine people's reactions if some of the same situations happened in our office.  We also put Ihor's stuff in jello a few times which was pretty fun, however more challenging than you would think.  We were always up to something. Many times when the directors had their meetings we would have "peon meetings".  We loved coming up with funny yet slightly inappropriate things to have around the office.  (Level 5 Partnership sign, Ricksism, turning the IMB prayer map into world domination map, the list goes on and on.)  I can't count the number of times Kim came into our area of the office and said "What is that???"

The Directors we got to work with were awesome as well. Most of them loved to have a good time and they were good at their jobs so it made for a great work environment most of the time.   Bob was the Executive Director my first year at Cleveland Hope.  He was a lot of fun and he taught me some really important principles that I've tried to follow to this day.  Always get back to people within 24 hours (even if its just to tell them you are still working on find the answer they need.) The second one I remember was under-promise, over deliver.  Bob was always looking out for the US/C2s and really wanted us to do well.  It was great because as long as it didn't interfere with work he was game for anything. I remember a really fun snow tubing trip he and his wife Jennifer took with the three of us girls.  It was a blast, but we were all really sore the next day! The other great thing I remember about Bob was that if he wasn't swamped with work and sometimes even when he was he would make time to sit down and talk with you and find out what was going on in your life and how you were doing.

As I mentioned before Kim was my supervisor.  She had high expectations which I think helped us to do our best but she would also support and protect us however she could.  Kim and I had a lot of fun hosting Catch the Vision Trips and working with volunteer teams and local church pastors.  What I loved about Kim is that she would train you well to do the job and then just let you go and do it.  She had full confidence in me and it was empowering for me to know that she trusted me to do a good job. She was also really concerned about how we were doing personally and she would do anything for us.  She has continued to be a great friend and mentor in my life.

4th of July part at the Graves

Brad Graves, was the church planting director and he and his family became my Cleveland family while they lived here.  I would go over to his house and watch LOST every Wednesday night with him and his wife Becky.  We had so much fun and Becky became a really close friend.  Becky and I both loved shopping and just doing girly stuff.   Brad is hilarious, he had the funniest sayings and was always a lot of fun to be around. I can still hear him introducing himself to people, "Hey how you doing, Brad Graves." He really liked to say his name... He also liked to talk about growing corn and shooting bottle rockets where he grew up in Arkansas.

Becky and Leah

The Graves left Cleveland at the end of my first year to go to Arkansas and get ready to plant a church in San Diego, CA.   We seriously talked about me going to California to help them, however God had different plans He showed me when He brought Darin into my life.   One of the coolest things about the Graves to me is that when they knew I wouldn't be going with them to California because of Darin they didn't get mad, instead they opened their home to him and let him stay there when he visited me in Cleveland and Brad helped Darin find a job in Cleveland.  Even though there was that horrible audition tape he tried to send Jeff. Thankfully Jeff knew it was Brad singing... we could have lost that job very quickly! 

Kevin's alliance... so small...

Kevin Litchfield was my supervisor at Cleveland Hope for about a week before I got moved back to working for Kim. However, it was an important week as that is the week I went on my first date with Darin and Kevin did say that the people he supervises usually end up finding their spouse while he is supervising them.  So good job Kevin!  I love Kevin he is also such fun guy who is passionate about serving the Lord and helping the local church.  He has a wonderful vision and was such a great addition to our staff.  Kevin is also hilarious because he often doesn't think before he talks, so it can end up sounding inappropriate  I also think he is funny even when he's trying to be, which he does a lot.  He often says he loves to be around me because I always laugh at his jokes.  One of my most vivid memories of Kevin at Cleveland Hope is him going around singing, "put the shackles ON my feet so I can dance."   Kevin is the only Director to have remained on staff after the Strategic Focus City Initiative ended and he has been a wonderful blessing to the work in our city.  Darin and I feel so blessed to have him as a support person in our corner as we help lead our church.

Randy Chestnut was the Director of Missions the first year and then the Executive Director the second year after Bob went to Baltimore.  He and his wife Denise, who was the receptionist at our office, are some of the most caring followers of Jesus you will ever meet.  They would do anything for you. Denise was a fabulous cook and she was always ready to give you a listening ear and a hug if you needed it.   Our other administrative assistant Chris is also one of the nicest most genuine people you will ever meet.  She was always ready to help out when needed and was fantastic at her job.  She was an absolute pleasure to be around.

Kim "preaching" to Carlton

Carlton was our prayer coordinator and he helped mobilize over 50,000 people to pray for Cleveland.  (I want to say it got close to 100,000 but I can't be sure.  I know it was over 50,000.)  Carlton was part time so he wasn't around as much but he was a lot of fun too.  He was so wise and you could see the Lord in him and sense the Lord's presence when he was around.  I still remember him teasing me after I got engaged about how I didn't even want to go to the "4 hour baseball game" that was my first date with Darin.

Our last edition to  our "peon" group was the wonderful Sarah Edwards.  Sarah took over Micah's job in the Fall of 2006 and she was such a great addition to our team. She did an amazing job helping recruit and organize all the collegiate missionaries we had come to Cleveland.  I was super excited to have another "girly" girl on the staff.  She also immediately joined the girls "alliance" against Ihor and Kevin, so how could we not like her!

Some of my favorite memories at Cleveland Hope include doing gymnastics with Leah during some down time, our staff retreat in Atlanta with the air soft pistol wars and our touch football game, eating next to a group we are pretty sure was the mob at an Italian restaurant we often frequented, coming into the office and finding that the ceiling fell, and along that same note coming in one Monday to find bullet holes in the window that Leah's desk faced.  Oh the joys of working in the ghetto!  I also loved our team lunch meetings that tended to take a good portion of the day and our "associate" lunch with our NAMB boss Rich where he taught us some military tactics for taking out a car in a high speed chase. Always good information to know.  I can't forget the traditional "God Bless the USA" whenever it was someone's birthday.  I remember when we were celebrating some August birthdays at a restaurant and the wait staff started to sing Happy Birthday and we had to tell them to stop singing we had our own song.  Their faces when we started to sing God Bless the USA was awesome!

There were of course frustrations.  Its funny because I know there were quite a few stressful situations we dealt with on regular basis and times that I was so frustrated I couldn't wait for the two years to be over. However looking back, its the good, fun times that stand out.  I loved that job and I loved the people I worked with.  As Cleveland Hope was drawing to a close I knew I would miss those people who had become like a family and almost 5 years after we ended our SFC stint its still the people that I still miss the most.  They were so talented, so driven and so focused on trying to bring honor and glory to our Lord.  It was one of the greatest pleasures of my life to have been in ministry with each of them and I am so grateful for what God taught me during my time there and of course the wonderful pastors, church planters and mission teams I had the pleasure of serving.  I don't think it was my "superbowl" (at least I hope not since I'm only 30) but it was an amazing, unforgettable experience that I was blessed to have. 

 

#13 Second Trip to Australia

Our American and Australian Sports Club Team!

For any of you who have ever been on a mission trip where you were really able to connect with the people you met, probably found yourself thinking "I wish I could join my mission trip world and my home world.  I would love for all my friends and family to be able to meet each other!"  Unfortunately that usually doesn't happen because often times you don't even get to go back a second time, so you can forget about your family and friends going.    Thankfully I was really blessed that it actually was God's plan not only for me to get to go back to Australia a second time but I got to take some of my family and close friends with me!

During my first summer in Australia the Senior Pastor, Dan, had given me an assignment to create a project using my major (marketing) that would help the church in some way.  (I may not have described that very well, it was 8 years ago so its hard to remember, but that was the basic premise of the project.)  So I put together a proposal where I first used my observations about the community as well the statistics and data I had available to me to analyze the demographics of the community and then came up with some ideas of different ways the church could reach out to their community.  I had noticed that there were a lot of children in the community and that the community was passionate about sports.  As I've mentioned in past posts I had a lot of experience putting together sports camps so I ended up proposing that the church do a sports camp (but they called it a sports club) the following year and I would come back and bring a team to help their church run it.  I don't know that I thought this would really be feasible when I proposed it, but I did honestly want to come back and I loved the idea of bringing some of my family and friends.  To my surprise the senior pastor, Dan and my supervisor (the associate pastor) Andrew loved the idea and were  really excited about me bringing a team to help do a "sports club".  So the wheels were in motion but I was still a little skeptical (although excited) that this would actually happen.  I had Andrew and Dan excited but they still needed to get it approved by the elders at the church and I had to go home and find out if I could put together a decent size team of experienced people who would be willing to raise the money to fly across the world and help us do this sports club.

The American Team!

When I got home I found out it wasn't going to be as challenging as I thought. My friends and family that I invited to come were really excited (I mean who wouldn't be excited about a trip to Australia?)  God worked things out and I was able to get together an awesome team.  My brothers, Rob and Chad and my sister in law Julie agreed to come as well as my best friend Amy and her sister Beth.  Rob got two of his students from his youth group, Chris and Laura, to come. I also had some other friends from my home church sign up, Bridget, Kristina, Megan, Mike, Zach and Stacey.  It was a GREAT team and we got to work with an amazing church.

I went over about a month ahead of the rest of my team so I could help make preparations for the sports club and the mission team's arrival.  The Australian coordinator for the sports club was a wonderful man named David French, and he was such a pleasure to work with on this project.  He had been making many preparations to get people from North Pine Baptist involved before I arrived and he had a great local team in place.  He also had host families arranged and had already started promotions for the club.   It was great to work with David and it was so good to be back with my Australian family. Some things were different of course but for the most part it felt like I was able to pick up right where I left off in my relationships with these dear friends.  I felt so blessed to be back and I was actually going to be able to join these two worlds for a brief time.

The team was there for about 10 days. The first few days were spent sight seeing and making final plans for Sports Club.  We had a fun trip to Brisbane which I remember included a ridiculously funny subway ride home, we were all very tired and Chris had us laughing hysterically pretending to be stuck in between the trains.  Yeah... we were definitely those loud obnoxious Americans during that part of the trip. We also got to spend a day at the beach where I believe they got to try some fish and chips. That's one of the food items I miss the most about Australia, it just isn't the same here! On Sunday the team led the morning and evening worship services and spent all of Sunday afternoon getting the Australian  volunteers and the American team together to work out all details for the sport times, morning celebration and of course the all important run-on skit! It was the super heroes them, which was my personal favorite theme!

It was a great week, we had a lot of kids.  I don't remember the exact number. I want to say close to a 100 maybe???  We had to battle some rain issues.  It had not rained there in a really long time yet that week it rained a lot. Thankfully they have a great space at their church and we were able to do a lot of things inside on the rainy days.  The teams worked beautifully together.  Everyone had a great time and I think some really special friendships were formed between the host families and mission teams as well as the all the sports club workers. I know it was a week the American team will remember for the rest of their lives. It makes me smile whenever I see my American friends and family and Australian friends comment on each others Facebook.  One time recently I found my self thinking, "how do they know each other??" Then I remembered oh yeah... you took them to Australia with you! 

We ended the week with a cook out or barbeque as the Aussies would say and a really fun trip to the Australia Zoo.  (Well there was a bad accident on the way that was not a fun experience but I think most everyone enjoyed themselves the rest of the day.)  However unfortunately we did not get to see Steve Erwin, which was disappointing but they did get to hold a Koala, pet kangaroos and see a crocodile show!

Most of the team went home after our trip to the zoo, but my brother Rob and his two students Chris and Laura stayed and we went up to Cairns to see the Great Barrier Reef and some other sights. We had a great time even though I picked the wrong part of the reef to go see.  You should go to the Outer Reef I believe for the most spectacular snorkeling or scuba diving.  We went to the inner reef which was okay and we did see a sea turtle and shark (well Chris "supposedly" saw a shark) but I wish I had known better and we had splurged for the outer experience. Sorry Rob, Laura and Chris!  We also got to go up into the rainforest which was pretty cool. 

Little Sally Walker goes to Australia!

After our long weekend Rob, Laura and Chris went home and I stayed another few weeks to wrap up things with the sports club follow up and say goodbye to the wonderful friends I had made in Australia. I even tried briefly to get a job there.  I went as far as going on an interview but I wasn't qualified for the job as I was only a recent college graduate.  I know now it was not in God's plan for me to stay there, although I was very willing at the time.


I treasure my times in Australia and the wonderful friends I was able to make over those two Summers (Winters for them).  As I said in my last post maybe one day God will surprise me and I will get to go back but even if I don't I feel so blessed that not only was I able to go back to this land that I fell in love with during my first trip, but I was also able to take some of my dear friends and family from my side of the world with me so that they could also experience a taste of the wonderful things I was able to experience.  Not very many people get to do that. I am so very blessed!