Summer Ends...

Greetings to all of you,

I hope God has been blessing all of you the way God has been blessing me. This summer in Chicago has been outstanding. We haven’t really had anything go “wrong” this summer at all! We have had groups from all over this country and parts of Canada feel God’s presence here and I am blessed to be a witness to it.

One story I have took place at a peace rally. I don’t know if this is making national news but Chicago has been hit hard when it comes to violent crimes in the past year. By July 1st of this year we have had over 300 violent crimes with some ending in death. In fact the weekend of July 24th, 4 people were shot and killed and 3 were critically wounded. The rally was put on by Brenda Matthews and I want to say that I am a witnessed to God’s uncanny ability to touch our hearts. I remember when Brenda said to me “you know what I should put on a rally” and two weeks later there I am standing out in the rain visiting with old friends and witnessing some of East Garfield Park’s God giving blessings. I am always impressed by the things Brenda can do and the people God has surrounded her with and I know that was reflected to the groups that witnessed a community bare it soul to ask God to anoint them as instruments of peace and to bless the Chicago community with the ability to love not destroy.

Another example of God’s blessings actually happened at our front steps. I should say on the wall next to our front steps. For 6 weeks a group of youth from the west side community along with aid from the city’s park district, and First Church of the Brethren (the place where DOOR Chicago is housed) re-painted a mural that was on Faith House (a building that we rent from First Church). During the 6 weeks groups got to see the transformation of this wall and witnessed the message the kids and First Church wanted to convey towards the community.

Finally I witnessed the transformation of my summer staff. This year for our end of the summer retreat we had a lock-in at Faith House where we did not communicate with the outside world for 24 hours and took that time to fellowship with one another. After our lock-in we then drove to the Indiana sand Dunes where we played at the beach and hiked. After the beach we came back to the city to have dinner at one of my favorite places called Café Too. Over dinner we all shared to one another what we felt were our best qualities and it was really overwhelming with all the positive feedback that they had for one each other. What is really funny is after dinner we went to a video arcade place and played laser tag against one another and they were all trying to dominate the game! It is truly a blessing to see the level of relationships we have all formed with one another and how God can bring complete strangers together to do the work we are all called to do. I would like to thank each of my staff this summer (and all the staff across the network) for their commitment for doing service and their open mindedness for learning new ways to praise and have a relationship with God.