Time Flies and God is Good!

It seems like just yesterday Cole and I were lost driving down Jonesboro Rd looking for the church where I would meet my family for the coming year. Now, I have been living in Atlanta for four weeks! I honestly can't believe that it has been that long. As the old saying goes, time flies when you are having fun! Although, not everything that we do has been "fun" I have learned a lot. During the not so "fun" times I am normally growing in my faith and seeing God's beauty! That is the beautiful thing, God is present in the times of fun and the times of solitude and learning.

When I say time flies, I mean, I have no idea where my week has gone. My schedule is crazy packed, but honestly I like it that way. It looks like this. On Sunday's I wake up and go to church at New Life Covenant after church we head home for lunch and use the next few hours to catch up on curriculum, writing newsletters, cleaning the house, etc. then Sunday nights we have what we call points meetings, this is our chance to talk about things the team could be doing better, and then we have a family story time where someone shares there "testimony". Monday thru Thursday, I get up at 6 and then the team has bible study and an hour of reflection time from 6:30 to 7:30. I go to my first work site at 8:30 and I normally get off between 12:30 and 1:00. Then i head home and start getting ready for my second work site which starts at 3:30 and goes until 7:00. After work everyday we have an activity. Monday is our grocery shopping day, Tuesday is Family Night (these are a ton of fun), Wednesday is Bible Study, Thursday is training or citywide. Saturday is community day, we are out in the community all day and then to end the day we have a community dinner open to anyone that wants to come over for food and conversation. Now I left Friday for last because it is a special day, it is my day of rest or sabbath day. (I will have a blog one week just on what this day looks like and what it means to me.)

Family night is just a time for the team to come together and enjoy each others company. Every week a different person leads family night, and this week just happened to be mine. The whole team was frantically trying to finish putting there newsletters together and their envelopes addressed. So it was nice to take a break from the stuffing of envelopes to enjoy each other, and play a game of Apples to Apples. We had a lot of fun playing, and it was just what the doctor ordered. You know the old saying, An apple a day keeps the doctor away!

In our Bible study on Wednesday night we have been reading The Good and Beautiful God. We have been in the study for two weeks. I am really enjoying the book which about taking our worldly narratives and changing them to Jesus' narratives. We have group discussion about the book and every week there is a soul training to go along with the chapter so it is really nice to listen to how the book is affecting everyone's life. We have about seven more weeks left in this study. I can't wait to see how God uses it in my life.

This week we had a "training" on Thursday. The reason I put training in quotations is because it didn't feel like a training at all. We did what is called interplay which was essentially acting goofy and having a good time while getting to know each other. It started off with us just moving our body while standing still. Then we began to move around the room doing whatever pleased us, which was to free us up and brings us out of our own heads. Then we did some mirroring exercises. This was a ton of fun! After mirroring, we did a babbling exercise where the instructor would give us a word and we would just talk about it. I heard and gave out a lot of useless information, but I enjoyed every minute of it. At the end of training I had a few major thoughts. The first was during the mirroring exercises, we would tend to start off doing something really excessive and then near the end we would mellow down. I feel like that can be applied to life and spirituality. We hustle and bustle at work and with family, but at some point we have to slow down take a breather and listen to God's voice in our life because your not going to hear him if you don't take the time to listen. The second thing I realized was how important it is to listen to one another, even if you are only listening to pointless information about parking meters. (and yes that was one of the topics.) All in all something that didn't feel like a training at all taught me some very important things that I want to carry with me throughout the year and the rest of my life.

Today, my sabbath, has been a really amazing day. I started off by reading my daily Bible (thanks to Tommy and Becky Holland for gifting me that!). Then I headed to the Library and got a few books. I got an autobiography of Abraham Lincoln, a biography of Martin Luther King Jr., and a Ted Dekker fiction book. Then I walked to Centennial park found a nice place to sit and spent thirty minutes in silence with God. It was beautiful! It has been a wonderful and restful day!

Tomorrow is community day. One thing I would like to happen tomorrow is that i will be able to just spend some time sitting on someone's porch with them. I am really trusting God in finding the relationships that are suppose to take place this year! So please be in prayer for the neighborhood and myself. I would also like to see a good turn out to our community dinner. We are serving white chicken chili! I can't wait! That is a great time of fellowship with neighbors.

Go and check out Luke 10 and the power behind Jesus teaching!
Thank you all for reading and your prayers! Grace and peace be upon you! I send my love!
In Christ
Adam  

This is Work and I'm loving it

I have been in Atlanta for three weeks now, and I love it! Although, I miss family and friends, Atlanta is quickly becoming my new home. I'm becoming familiar with faces and names, the Marta system and just the community in general. I meet interesting people everyday, and almost all encounters are warm and welcoming which make it that much easier to feel like home. This feeling of being at home gives me a sense of what it is like to be a true neighbor and to live in community.

I started work on Monday! I work at Cafe 458, as assistant kitchen manager, and I also work at SAY Yes an after school program at my church. I have not yet assumed the role as asst. kitchen mangager because I'm just learning how to cook. Lucky the staff and regular volunteers there are amazing and making it very easy to learn and run the kitchen. At the Cafe we serve homeless that are going thru a program to become self sufficent. Since it is a program I am able to see the same faces every few days. This will hopefully allow me to become friends with them, learning there stories and sharing mine with them as well. I love working in the kitchen. To be honest at first I was skeptical about the whole thing. I was nervous that I would mess something up when it came to the cooking part, but thanks to some very great people I'm learning the art of cooking quickly. I hope to take what I learn in the kitchen back to Tennessee or wherever God takes me from here.

Like I said I also work in an after school program that serves our neighborhood in English Avenue. The program is for students k-8. I mostly work with 3-5. This is quickly becoming a blessing in my life. I do a Bible study with all students k-5 on Monday's and I help tutor students 3-8 everday. I love getting to work with kids of the neighborhood. I hope to develope a mentorship with a few of the students. I believe in all the kids in the program. They are all exceptionally smart, not that it surprises me in the least. I can not wait to see the children develope over the year!

Thanks again for all your prayers. I have to sign off. Grace and Peace.
In Christ,
Adam

Welcome to Atlanta

I have been living in Atlanta for two weeks now. I live on Sunset Ave in the English Ave community. I'm living in community with six other people. We are all part of a program called Mission Year. In case you are wondering, Mission Year is a year long program in which people live in an urban neighborhood to experience intentional neighboring and discipleship. There are many other aspects to the program. They are justice, community service (volunteer work), church partnership, and simplicity. I am very excited to see how all these aspects will play into my year, and what I will learn from each one.

Mission Year is set up for relational ministry. It is a chance to befriend people and truly pour yourself into their lives and allow them to pour into yours. I believe that there will be plenty of times that I am blessed more than I bless. My reasons for coming to an urban neighborhood is not to save it from being urban or to save the people. My reasons for coming is to live in solidarity with my neighbor. Do I intend to share Jesus with my neighbor, absolutely. Do I intend to love my neighbor with every fiber of my being, yes. Do I want to see my neighbors come to Jesus, of course. (That is if they do not already know Jesus.) But I intend on seeing the beauty that God has already given English Ave. I am not the communities savior. Their savior died on a tree and rose again over 2000 years ago. I am just hear to tell my neighbors about him and about what he did for them. I want to hold to the model of Mission Year. Love God. Love people. Nothing else matters.

As I said before I have been here for two weeks, and for those two weeks I have been in what is called orientation. Orientation for all intents and purposes is a two week long class about what Mission Year is all about. Many of the trainings made me think deeper and harder on my convictions. Some of the training was very emotionally draining which is not a bad thing. I experienced a roller coaster of emotions, that ranged from anger to guilt. It was all in all an amazing experience, and I hope to be able to use what I have learned in my day to day living. I pray that I can use it to find injustice, and pursue the correct avenues to fight that injustice. I am glad that I was able to experience these two weeks of training and orientation. I feel that it has readied me for the year.

Now that orientation is over, I will begin working at my service site next week. I will be working at a place called Cafe 458. I will be running the kitchen. Anyone that knows me is probably freaking out about this fact. All joking aside, I am very excited for this opportunity. Cafe 458 serves a program for the homeless. I will be cooking lunch for the program! I truly can not wait to get started.

I will also be serving in an after school program, at my church New Life Covenant, called S.A.Y Yes. I will be working with youth from the our neighborhood ages k5-2nd grade. I'm stoked about this opportunity and I pray that God blesses me as much as he uses me in this experience!

Thanks for reading! May peace and grace fall on you! God Bless!

Peace,
Adam