Lots of great ministry opportunities

Our last blog post was only a week ago. I don't want to wait another week to write a new one since we have quite a bit going on in the last few days.

First, we got to honor our DTS students with a love feast. It was a beautiful night with great food and a lot of loving words. It is so beautiful to see, how these young people want to know more about God, grow in their relationships with Him, and are willing to go out and serve other people. They will be going to Romania after Christmas and working with Ukrainian refugees. During their lecture time here in Minneapolis, we also have quite a few outreaches. Mainly with homeless or elderly people.

And here comes something that I am really excited about. We have connected with a ministry that is organizing an annual event, called "3000 acts of kindness". The purpose of the event is to serve about 3000 homeless people with haircuts, meals, warm winter clothes, bibles, and kindness. That all happens in the ballroom of the Minneapolis Convention Center. I had the idea to have a little coffee shop corner. We serve cookies, coffee, and tea, like in a nice coffee shop. Homeless people can come by, sit down, and order coffee or tea and we will bring these to them. We will also sit down with them and spend some time. The organizers really liked the idea and now I get to organize it. Ray will be helping me with that. It will be a YWAM outreach. The big day is December 12. Now we need to organize cookies for 3000 people. For that, we will reach out to stores and see if they want to donate a few dozen. Unfortunately, the cookies have to be store-bought and can't be self-made.

Last Tuesday, I met with Amber from Esther Homes. Esther Homes is a housing program for mothers in crisis situations. I love their concept and I really wanted to let others know about it. That is why I recorded a video with her. You can watch it here: Learn about Esther Homes - YouTube

One of my projects I want to do is make this kind of video with more organizations to draw a bigger picture of the homelessness situation in the twin cities. Unfortunately, the last official statistics were from 2018 and the next ones will be published in October 2023.

Ray is continuing to connect with ministries working with Refugees. He has learned about two organizations and projects he can plug into. A former YWAMer who Ray met in Greece doing refugee work shared with the base about Arrive Ministries. Arrive Ministries receives arriving refugees and provides three months of social services through government contracts. However, they also connect families and teams with refugees to basically "adopt" a refugee family for a year. They help them with practical things like bureaucracy, doctor appointments, learning the transportation system, etc. Ray is planning to adopt a family himself, but he also introduced the whole concept to YWAM Minneapolis and as a team, we will be adopting at least one family as well in early 2023 (as the Christmas season is quite busy already). There is also a ministry that has a house that takes in Asylum seekers. Unfortunately, Asylum seekers can receive no government assistance or work for the first year in the US, so it is very hard for them to survive. The ministry provides housing and basic needs so they can survive until their case is decided.

I also have some good news about our personal life: We have finally found an apartment! We were connected to a family with a downstairs apartment in their house that we can rent beginning in December. That means we will be in our apartment before Christmas. God is good and he provides. We wanted to look at a different apartment that same day and the landlord texted us that she doesn't have time and is not sure if she has something available. And then we got to see a bigger apartment with a fireplace and backyard. It is close to the base and closer to the city than we are right now. That was important for us since we will be in the city for ministry more often now. The family is really nice, and they love to have missionaries in the house.

We still need to grow our support network. The landlords are open to our situation but in the long run, we want to be able to pay the full rent. Thank you for praying for us. We see God's hand in this situation