The City of Angels - The Mini Series (Part 1)

July 13th - July 23rd

Many months ago, Joe & Lisa approached Jed & I about helping bring a group of people from New Life & [nlcf] out to Los Angeles to give them a small taste of what life was like to live and live missionally. Those years we spent in Los Angeles have had a huge impact of both Jed & I and we were super excited to show people and a vision & mission of what God is doing in a city that we fell in love with.

During the months leading up to the trip, we had over 40 people interested, worked with 5 churches, 3 other organizations and hosted 1 unsuccessful fund raiser to make this dream come true. By July 13th, 19 people boarded a plane to LA for an unforgettable week. It felt like the perfect team, 4 couples, 6 kids, 1 recent college graduates, 1 college student, 1 recent high school graduate, 1 PhD student & 1 university staff member.

We all headed out to LA on a direct flight for Dulles to LAX on a Saturday late afternoon. It seemed like a great idea as we arrived in LA right around 7:30pm. Just in time for dinner and what better place to take a bunch of newbies to the area then IN N OUT!

Much to Jed & my surprise, we showed up and Eric, Audrey, Tim & Wendy were there to welcome us & our team to the city.Eric & Audrey had even made us a "Welcome to LA" poster! It meant so much to me to see there faces as soon as we got there.

Hayli, Dave, Scott, Katie & Aaron

Jed, Alice, Wendy, Tim & Aaron

MengYun, Terri, Audrey & I

Aaron, Alice, Audrey, Me, Eric, Jed, Wendy, Tim, MengYun, Terri

After a fantastic dinner, the team headed to Hope International, where we would be staying for the week. Hope has a building behind there sanctuary that has a preschool on the bottom and living space on the second floor. Pastor Ed was nice enough to allow our group to use the two common area rooms for us to stay and even provided mats, sleeping bags, pillows and even 2 cots and 2 mattresses.

Most people were ready to call it a night when we finally got situated in our new home while a small group of us decided to hang out in the hall way playing cards. During out time hangout in the hall way, we had the chance to meet some of the guys that lived upstairs and a few we would have the chance to work with this upcoming week.

This is going to be a great week!