His City

I just got home from seeing an old friend that I haven't seen in a while. This old friend of mine lives here in the city and at one time he use to sleep on the streets here in Philly. He now lives in an adult care home where he is happy as he can be. It was great to see him but I was also sad to tell him that I was moving down to North Carolina, I assured him that he could call or write me as much as he would like. He is a great guy that the Lord uses to remind me that no matter what our circumstances He will always provide for our needs.

We had our annual Christmas Party at Cast Your Cares the weekend before last. It was freezing, raining and even snowing at times. But the weather was not a huge issue because we had a huge tent set up with heaters and hot chocolate inside for everyone. We invited everyone from the neighborhood into the tent where we had ourselves a little Christmas service. The guy speaking was a pastor who had once lived on the streets himself at one point in his life. He spoke about the freedom that is only found in Jesus and shared about what that freedom has looked liked in his life. It was extremely powerful and the Lord drew many hearts toward Him that night. After the service, for the first time in years, we had our Christmas dinner inside. We opened up our doors and were able to feed over a hundred people a hot meal. We also handed out gifts to everyone that came as they left. It was a wonderful night.

The thing we will miss the most about Philadelphia is the people we have grown to love over the many years of being here. They are people that we am so thankful to the Lord for, ones that we will never forget. It is funny to look back and remember my first day in Philly. I was nervous, in culture shock, and a little scared about what I had gotten myself into. The Lord reassured me that day to continue loving and seeking Him and to love others as He loves me. That simple truth stuck with me all these years and I have been able to be a part of something wonderful here in Philadelphia. Jesus has blessed both of our lives while living our lives here. We have seen many things that have broken our hearts and many things that warmed our hearts and made us smile. We have watched Jesus do some pretty amazing things, and we are confident as we leave that He will continue to do amazing things here in His city Philadelphia.

Big Changes

Well it has been a while to say the least since our last blog post. We have both been doing well and the Lord has been doing some great things not only in our lives but in the lives of others as well. Life has been crazy for both Anna and I. Anna has continued to work at her after school program as well as working at an internship at a children's hospital. She has really enjoyed it but she hasn't had much free time to do anything else. I have been taking online classes on top of working at Cast Your Cares during the day. So my free time has become no existent as well. I decided to start taking online classes in order to finish up some basic classes that I never took when I was in college years ago.

Many of you know but for the one's that do not know Anna and I are going to be moving from Philadelphia to Raleigh, North Carolina. After a lot of prayer and tough decision making Anna and I decided that our time here in Philly was coming to an end and that the Lord had some new things in store for us, one which involved me going back to school. It is something that we are very excited about but at the same time we are very sad to leave a place and a people that we love so very much. Both of us have grown so much through our time here in Philadelphia. The Lord has led us through so many adventures here. We got to see God's heart for his people here, watched peoples lives be dramatically changed by Him, and this is also place where we first met as well. So to say the least Philadelphia is a very special place for both of us.

With that said ministry has continued on even though my blogging skills happen to stop for awhile. Some updates from ministry include giving out 32 turkeys to families for thanksgiving which was cool to see, hitting an all-time record of a busy day at the food cupboard by giving out 60 bags of food and my favorite of the past month was getting to go out with Anna and her afterschool kids on a bowling outing. It was the first time I got to meet all the new kids from this year, which I must say are some very sweet kids.

We do have some really big changes coming up in our lives, ones that I don't think either of us know how to handle. In the mean time we are just going to soak up all the Lord has to offer us here in Philly. I will try to get a little better a my blogging skills as I have sort of gotten a handle on managing my online classes because well they are almost over. While we are still here we will continue to try to update you as much as possible with the wonderful things the Lord is doing here in Philadelphia.