If you haven't picked up, we were never able to find jobs (but not from lack of trying- trust me). We applied to hundreds of places, but it seemed to hurt us that we are only here for 4 months. Honestly though, that's probably the average amount of time people spend at a retail job anyway.. Whatever. After a bit of discouragement and a lot of prayer, we decided that the Lord obviously still has us in His hands, and maybe He didn't want us working jobs anyway. So we started to look into volunteer opportunities. We're also hindered by the fact that we don't have cars here, so we're completely reliant on public transportation. Also, now that we're living in a smaller suburb further out of the City with the Hansens, public transportation is even less accessible. Still, we managed to get connected with a ministry called City Life, located one suburb up from us. City Life is a non-profit ministry run by a church called Jubilee, which owns the building in which our church, Gateway, meets in. (that's confusing, I know.) We got to meet one of the few paid staff there- Janet- and immediately clicked with her. She's from America also, having moved here 20 years ago and married an Australian. She really is awesome and so fun to be around.
Janet got us started volunteering up there on Wednesdays and Fridays during the day. City Life is a ministry for the homeless and disadvantaged of the area. There aren't really that many homeless people around, but there are a lot of people down on their luck, so City Life exists to meet some of their needs. They have a soup kitchen/cafe that serves dinner on Mondays and Thursday nights, and serves lunch on Wednesdays and Fridays. We have been helping with lunch on Wednesdays (they usually serve 100-150 people), then on Fridays they use us for miscellaneous office jobs. They love that we have marketing and communication degrees, so we're using that! haha. Yesterday it was our day to help with lunch, but there were tons of extra volunteers from a school there, so we didn't have tons to do, so after the meal they put us to work deep cleaning the kitchen. (I felt like a baby ruth at pine cove.. haha) It was cool though, because it's not like anyone was watching us work, or seeing us, and Jen just kept quoting mark 10:45- "for even the son of man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many."
On Monday of this week we were also able to go and help a lady from church- Rachel- who is on staff at the church, and is now starting her own business with tons of mailouts. It's tons of work at the moment, and being a single mom, she barely has time for anything, much less all the extra tedious counting that this new business has brought on. So Jen & I went over to her house for the day and counted and stacked things for her new project she's sending out this week. Rachel has an amazing testimony. The Lord has completely transformed her life and her heart, and it was so so cool just to be around her and see how the Lord has taken her from the pits of despair and depression to joy and life and purpose. It was also cool how we were just able to help her. We have been praying that the Lord will show us people and ways to serve and bless people.
I just finished reading a book called Crazy Love by Francis Chan. (If you're looking for a super challenging book to read, this is it) It has challenged me in so many ways. One of the things that he wrote that has really forced me to evaluate my life was repeating Jesus' words: "love your neighbor as yourself." Okay, yep heard that before. But Francis takes it to the next level- what if you saw everyone not just as yourself, but as a member of your family? What if that poor person I'm serving lunch to was my grandmother? Or my daughter? Or my brother? Wouldn't we treat them differently? Wouldn't we want the very very best for them? Something to think about..
So volunteering has been good here. We're still praying and seeking out more opportunities to serve and to make the most of our time. It has been fun for us to also be helping out with the youth at the church here. (Even though they all think we're 16.. no idea why) Mostly they just love talking to us because we're from America, but more on that later..
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