No Coverage!

Well we did not make the news or Focus on the Family. Oh well, maybe next year!

Yesterday and today was just about being with family. Yesterday we went to church and then went to our Pastor Faye's church and spent time with the people they were serving Thanksgiving dinner to. We had a good time, so interesting conversations.

We then went to my relatives in Long Beach, ate and had some good hang out time.

Today, my dad (who is here from Arizona) helped work on our vans transmission. The dealer said it could not be rebuilt, but dad says theres hope. We changed the filter and gasket and put in some super miracle additive, so hopefully that will help.

Zach turned three today!

We just got home from a great birthday extravaganza at Chuck E. Cheese's! Zach had a great time. In the past his birthday got overshadowed by the events of Boxes of Love and Thanksgiving, but not this year. We all had a lot of fun seeing him glow with excitement.

What a joy he is. He makes our lives so my more fulfilling. Thank you God for Zach.

Recovering!

We are currently recovering from Saturday's Boxes of Love event. It went well, however we were short on Boxes. We think we were shorted in our bible delivery. We'll figure it out.

ABC Channel 7 hasn't run the Boxes of Love story yet, maybe we were cut!

However, it looks like our Box of Love interview will be on Focus on the Family's radio show on Thursday.

Boxes of Love

Currently, we have about 400 volunteers in our warehouse (yes, I snuck out for a second!) for the afternoon shift of the 16th annual Boxes of Love Packing party. We will have seen almost 700 volunteers help us pack almost 8000 boxes that will be distributed by 60 inner city churches/ministries! It has been a great day (except for the forklift that dies, an additional rental soon followed!) for all of us.

If your in LA watch ABC channel 7 for their coverage of the of the event today. Nancy and I had a great time with their photographer Russell, who showed a lot of interest in the event. He shot a lot of additional tape so it may be used again through Thanksgiving.

Please pray with us now as these 60 churches attempt to share the love of Christ with their neighbors through the delivery of the boxes. Pray specifically for; people to come to Christ, people to come to church and churches reenergized in evangelism.

Also, please pray for us and come join us for the Christmas Boxes of Love packing party on December 20th. I will send out more info on that shortly. Also, keep checking www.boxesoflove.org for updates.

Thank you all for your prayers and support of what God is doing through Boxes of Love.

Every Young Man's Battle

Had a great time this morning with Ramiro in our weekly study. Were now going through 'Every Young Man's Battle'. It has led to some really open times and great conversations between us. I'm so proud of Ramiro and the stands he is making. I do not envy high school students these days!

He talked to his older brother about Christ this week. This brother lives a state away and is going through some rough times.

We praying and seeing what God will do.

Busy Day

This seems to be the story of my life. Busy day, another busy day.

In urban ministry it always feels like your never done. I'm sure that's also true in other ministries and professions, but in the city life is a constant, never ending pace.

I currently have seven major projects open as well as the normal stuff.

Today, was mostly about fund development in preparation for our Boxes of Love Packing Party on Saturday. We will have a special program for major donors and potential major donors. It's always fun to have these highly interactive days where you can show people a part of Christianity they don't get to see very often. It's fun to see the lights go on when they see people that look so different, talk different and worship different and see how they also love Jesus.

We also met with a pastor in Watts, who has been a main ministry Partner for many years. We are meeting with some of our Ministry Partners to brainstorm how we can get pastors to work together. This is probably one of the most difficult things to do in the history of Christendom!

MTA Strike Finally Over!

Thank God! The strike which has crippled so much of our immediate and surrounding neighborhoods is finally over. The buses began rolling again tonight.

This is a real answer to prayer to so many of the families we work with who have been literally disabled in their daily routines.

A young guy from our teammembers (Bob and Susan) church got back into school (with their prodding and assistance) just before the strike, and he hadn't been back since.

Toya, a single mother who lives across the street from can now get to a new job which is about 3 miles away. She has no other way to get there an a regular basis.

The average annual salary for MTA mechanics is $50,000. They have access to several health plans through a union-administered trust fund. Single workers pay nothing for health care. Spouses pay $3 a month. Family coverage is $6 a month.

You can make your own conclusions.

MTA strike continues to cause serious struggle to LA poor

This bus strike is amazing to me. We are now in the 5th week of the strike with on and off again negotiations.

An LA Times article today showed the significant impact the strike is having on health care and the poor.

Would a strike such as this been able to go on so long in a place like Orange County? I don't think so. What if the CalTrans freeway maintainence workers went out on strike and it got to the point of all the freeways in OC were closed. How long would that be allowed to go on? Would there be five hundred other outside sources stepping in to bring the situation to a close?

Why is it that when a situation affects the inner city like this, it takes so long to come to resolution?

Why are the public schools here in such disrepair? Would that situation be allowed to continue as long had it been Irvine schools?

And now, as a recent result of the 'flood from nowhere' last Tuesday night, the Governor has declared parts of South LA (Watts, parts of Lynwood, Compton and South Gate) a disaster area.

Makes me think of the old adage, "When it rains it pours".

This is a basic truth of life here in the inner city.

AC4/TechMission Partnership

This has been a great conference! Well worth the time.

My National Director and I just met with the AC4 leadership discussing a partnership in setting up a regional computer refurbishing center in our warehouse, and potentially replicating this in other HLIC cities.

We all are on the same page in terms of implementatin and design. Praise God for groups that can come together and work effectively!

Why is this the exception, not the rule!?!!

We are now working together to plan this out for implementatin as God leads.

This would hughly serve our HLIC network of 300+ inner city churches and the So Cal AC4 members.

It's so much fun to see God's timing on things work together!

Greetings from New Orleans

Just had some incredible Jumbalaya for lunch. I have to find that in LA, but it probably won't be the same!

I'm here in the AC4/CCDA conference computer lab trying to digest all I have heard in just a half of a day.

Just learned of some great resources to help non-profits like ours in terms of Technology Planning. NPower has some incredible tools to help IT folk in these areas, as well as CTCnet. This is info that will save days of work! Oh, the power of networking.

Time to go to the next workshop.

Heading to NO

Headed to the AC4 conference tommorrow. Hope to talk with them to finalize some of our talks about setting up a West Coast AC4/Here's Life Inner City Computer Refurbishing Center in our warehouse facility.

Partnerships are key- a real spiritual synergy. We can do alot more together then we can alone.

Don't think my handheld email is able to get to the blog- I'm sure some dumb little configeration problem. So may not be updating til the end of this next week.

Hanging out with the Family

In urban ministry you need to learn to just relax.

I'm not very good at that, but it still is fun to hang out with my wife and kids!

We're in our PJ's watching cartoons and doing nothing. We just had a good pillow fight. I think I won, but me daughter disagrees with me. Some good time before I head out to New Orleans for the conferences next week for the AC4 and CCDA conferences.

Meetings

It is amazing how many meetings we have. Meeting for this, meeting about that person, meeting to talk about a new idea, a meeting to clarify an old one.

Today was all about meetings.

One conference call, a meeting to prepare for the next meeting, both of which didn't really happen because of an unplanned meeting.

The unplanned meeting was with Convoy of Hope leadership. It was a surprise because, although we knew we were getting three truck loads of food, we didn't know some of the ministry leaders were delivering them!

They are such a blessing and have incredible servant hearts. We planning to connect more on a day without so many meetings!

The State of Our City
The overcast November skies are finally bring some relief to our fire ravished neighborhoods. This is a real answer to prayer. Many of our staff have been manning Red Cross shelters from Canoga Park to San Diego. I believe we will feel the effects of this huge disaster for a long time.

At the same time we are still under the crippling effects of two major labor strikes; the grocery clerks and the MTA mechanics. The latter being felt much more significantly in our inner city communities.

I was at Victory Baptist church in South Central the first week of the MTA strike and heard of a member there that had to pay $40 one way to get to work. So he probably worked till noon just to pay for his transportation to get there! Victory Baptist usually feeds 1000-1500 people every Friday, partly from the food the receive from our Resource Center. However, this day during the morning hours, I only saw maybe a hundred people in the food line. They told me that the lack of numbers were directly due to the bus strike.

Because of this, I'm very excited about our annual Boxes of Love outreach this Thanksgiving. I pray that this help bring a bit of relief to families that are really struggling. Please join us on November 22nd (the Saturday before Thanksgiving) for our annual Box of Love Packing Party at our Resource Center in Lynwood. An information card is in the mail to you today.

Even though we completely lost our primary food source (due to the national USDA surplus food shortage- click here to see a Sunday, Nov. 2nd New York Times Article , on the hunger in America) we now have half of our goal of 10,000 Boxes of Love. These boxes will be distributed as an evangelistic tool by 100 inner city churches and ministries all across greater Los Angeles. The goal is to bring food and the hope of Jesus to 60,000 people!

Please pray for us in this endeavor. Would your church like to get involved in helping to fill boxes? Check out our newly designed website for more information. Boxes of Love

Boxes of Love
God is doing it. He is working out our food situation. Currently, we have about 7000 boxes and moving toward 8000.

Check out www.boxesoflove.org for information on how you can help!