The City of Angels - The Mini Series (Part 8)

July 13th - July 23rd

Saturday (July 20th)

Today was the teams last day in LA. We have had a great time and today was going to be no different. As we spent the morning cleaning up and packing up, Jed and I made a quick trip to the dollar store for little LA Lakers note pads and the local donut shop (Sam's Donut Factory) and headed back for our last group time. We spent some time just reflecting about our week and sharing what stood out to us the most. It was a great time together.

After our time together, we all hopped in the big van and the smaller SUV for separate excursions. Jed & I took Scott, Katie, Aaron, Alice, & Terri for an adventure around LA. Our first stop was a lego exhibit called The Art of the Brick where Dave and Shalom meet up with us. The exhibit was in Glendale at the top of a mountain overlooking the city in a place called Forest Lawn.

The exhibit was really cool and we had a great time checking it all out but in typical museum fashion, no pictures allowed. But I was able to find these online!

The craziest part about the exhibit was the location. Forest Lawn is not your typical place to go to visit art exhibits, it is a cemetery. The entire experience was pretty crazy! There were tons of places to explore at this cemetery that had other art exhibits. We had hear that they had a replica of the Last Supper that we were all excited to go see. (I mean, really, we are already hanging out in a cemetery, might as well see all that they have...) As we were going to find The Last Supper Window, we ended up finding a replica of David. At first we just jumped out of the car to take a quick picture of him but then we ended up exploring the area a little more and found The Mystery of Life statue. It was just amazing all the art that was all around us here!

The crazy part about the Last Supper replica was that it was in a the Great Mausoleum on the grounds. But we all decided, "Why not." and off we went. The Great Mausoleum was pretty wild to see. There were tons of sculptures all around and different areas throughout that were designated for families only. As we turned a corner there was The Last Supper Window and it was beautiful. They had chairs for people to set and just hang out so all walked in and just sat, sat and thank, reflected, sat in almost total quiet. It was really neat experience and something completely unexpected when we started off today.

I am pretty sure we could have spent most of the day there looking at the view, other art exhibits, sculptures and many other things but it was time to check out some more of the city. So we picked up Eric & Audrey and headed downtown for lunch to a famous place called Philippe. It was a really fun dive that we all enjoyed. We all sat and ate, shared pie, stories of the week and just had a fantastic time.

We were right downtown with Chinatown just a few blocks away, a craft fair (we learned later) and a ton of food trucks but we just didn't have enough time to do everything so after saying good bye to Shalom, we all hopped in our cars and continued heading south and west to Manhattan Beach.

This week we have spent almost all of our time on the east side of the city and only a few hours at a beach, so we decided to go check out a beach area. We walked around the shopping area, headed down the pier, found a very little aquarium, walked along the boardwalk checking out the ridiculously huge homes.

We didn't get must time before we stopped in for out last Jamba Juice, said good bye to Dave, Eric and Audrey and headed back to Hope to pick up our stuff, the rest of the group and head for the airport.

Greg, Michelle & Elisabeth Larson and Dave all surprised us and were at the church to say one last good bye to everyone. It was a mad dash of packing up vehicles, last minute cleaning and quick goodbyes. We made one last stop on the way to the airport, Zankou Chicken.

It was sad to see everyone go. We dropped everyone and all the stuff off at the door and we headed to turn in the large rental SUV and pick up something much smaller for the two of us to drive around in for the next few days.

After saying good bye to everyone, Jed & I headed out to his sister's place for the night. We spent the evening hanging out with our nieces and just catching up with them and all the things they are doing.

The City of Angels - The Mini Series (Part 7)

July 13th - July 23rd

Friday (July 19th)

Today was a very bittersweet day. It is our last day working at Hope in the Manna Room, and our last day at the Neighborhood Bible Clubs. So our last morning, we hopped up out of our sleeping bags to go spend some time with Karen one last morning. Dave, Jed & I have really enjoying getting up and working with him every morning. I think the early morning exercise, serving, music and laughs has been the perfect way to start every morning and I will definitely miss it. After finishing up our work, we had to snap a quick picture with Karen.

We headed upstairs for bible reading but not breakfast this morning. We had other plans for a breakfast in the city after bible reading. We were excited to join Lenny and the others but were also antsy to get on our way since the schedule was so tight this morning. But it seemed that God had other plans for us. Instead of our 30 min bible reading, this morning it went for an hour. It was really good and Lenny had a lot of great things to share. As we rushed off to hope in our vehicles, we realized what a good thing it was that Lenny had kept us late. When we were leaving the church, we noticed a few police cars (lights on) and a helicopter circling. Having stayed in the area for a week, none of this really surprised us until we found out that it was because of the Manna Room that it was all happening. Unbeknownst to us, while we were all upstairs, someone came into the Manna Room, grabbed a knife and started threatening people. He attempted to take things but the guys volunteering that day & the guys that live there called the police, cornered the guy and wouldn't let him leave until the police got there. How crazy is that! And if we would have left 30 minutes earlier we would have been right in the middle of it.

As we all tried to put the pieces together of the early morning, we all hopped in vehicles to head down to the Farmers Market. We always enjoy going here for breakfast and just to walk around.

Scott got his donut!

After a really quick breakfast, we headed off to The Getty. The Getty is so much fun. It is such a great place for views of the city, they have museums and beautiful gardens. We all had about an hour before the Neighborhood Bible Club team had to head to there last day with the kids. It was very unfortunate that we got such a small window of time, you could spend days at the Getty and still not get it all. But we were all excited to be able to at least get a little time.

Annie & the kids stopped by to say hi

There was a small group of people that didn't get more then 15 minutes at the museum because they had a meeting with Kate. She works with an organization called Cherish that helps get ladies out of sex trafficking. Jed was able to attend the talk and the feed back from everyone that heard it was truly amazing what they heard and what is being done to help.

When the Neighborhood Bible Club left the rest of us had time to go back to explore but we were all really wanting to go back to help at the Manna Room for the 4pm meal instead. So we hurried back to Hope to hang out with everyone and cook one last meal with Jason and the gang. We were all so excited and happy to have one last chance to do this before we all headed home.

Chris

Jeff

Ray

Awesome food list

Once we finished cooking, serving, hang out with people, and cleaning up, most of us lingered around meeting, talking and saying a few good byes before we went to get cleaned up and head out for our evening excursion, Santa Monica Pier & 3rd Street Promenade.

We all had a great time hanging out, walking around, and being silly for the evening. We had a lot of friends from LA join us. We had dinner with Shalom, Eric, Audrey & Dave and when we got to Thai Dishes, Tim, Wendy, Soccer Matt & Amy were there having dinner too.

After dinner, we met up with the team again and decided who was leaving and who was staying. But right before we all left, Eric got a great group picture of everyone.

The group of us that stayed late just walked around for a while. There were many hilarious things that happened and were said but only one was documented in picture that I have to share. We walked by a book store and saw this:

Katie couldn't help but take a picture. Many in the group didn't get to see it but it was hilarious telling everyone what the title of the book was and how they thought the cover of the book would look before seeing the actual picture. So funny.

After walking for a while we all decided to find a coffee shop to hang out. Not much was still opened that late but we were able to find, Interactive Cafe. It wasn't great but it was exactly what we were looking for.

We hated for the day to end but we knew that we had one more full day to explore before it was time for the team to head home.

The City of Angels - The Mini Series (Part 6)

July 13th - July 23rd

Thursday (July 18th)

Thursday started with Scott & Katie joining Jed & I with the way early morning Manna Room routine. We all had a great time as we earned our stripes with Karen and the rest of the team that is out there bright and early every morning. We all laughed about which boxes or bags he would let the ladies carry versus the boxes and bags he made the guys carry. It is such a fun way to start every morning.

Of course, it is followed with breakfast and bible reading and more time with the guys cooking and serving. Over this past few days we have really formed relationships, and I am realizing for me that sometimes it is more about those relationships then trying to find 19 different things for 19 extra people to do. It has been such a great experience.

After our morning/early afternoon routine at the Manna Room, we headed downtown to help with the Bicycle Bread Company. This was something Jed & I were really excited to be a part of. Just a quick history on how we know the BBC crew, Stephen Gordon was a student at USC when we first met him through Kairos. With a group of people from Kairos (that have now branched into South LA Christian Life), they started making and selling bread to the local neighborhoods. It is such an awesome story.

So our job was to help spread the word. With and old friend of ours, Shalom, we flyered streets right around her house and near the bakery. The great part about flyering the neighborhoods was we didn't just drop the flyer and run, we knocked on every door and talked to anyone that would answer. It was so great to meet people in the neighborhood, hear their stories and see their excitement for a local bakery. And, I was teamed up with Shalom and we had a great time catching up on each others lives.

After a few hours of flyering the neighborhood, we walked down to a cafe that serves all their sandwiches on Bicycle Bread Company's bread, The Blu Elefant Cafe. This place was super cute and we all helped support local business as we got cool drinks after a warm afternoon of work.

We were going to get an opportunity to check out the bakery in action later in the evening so we planned on meeting up with the Neighborhood Bible Club Group for an early dinner before we headed down to the bakery. So we met everyone (and a few extra friends) at Roscoe's Chicken & Waffles. Everyone should try chicken and waffles at least once and it is such a fun place to go!

When we got done with dinner we still had plenty of time before we needed to be at the bakery so we made a very unwise decision and took everyone out to Kenneth Hahn Park. Don't get me wrong, the park is great and the views are fantastic (when it is clear) but we pushed our luck with traffic, didn't get nearly enough time at the park and were late getting to the bakery.

Even though we were late getting to the bakery, I think it ended up being perfect timing. Stephen was there and he had already started to mix everything so a lot of the prep work was already done. As he finished mixing the dough, he told us the story of where the bakery came from and where they hope it is going. I think the funniest part was when he was trying to explain that he got his mom's bread recipes from his 13 year old sister over the phone and mistook Katie for being 13. We all still laugh about that!

The bakery only bakes twice a week, shares the store front & kitchen with another bakery, and delivers bread one day a week. It is quite an undertaking to run a bakery while everyone involved has full time jobs. It is just so impressive the drive that they all have and the vision they all share to make a difference in there neighborhood. We had every expectation of seeing what they do and heading out. One hour max of their time; but Stephen had other plans for us. He let us do almost all of the baking! They even let us make cinnamon rolls with cream cheese & jalapeno with cream cheese for us to have. (Unfortunately at 11pm they still weren't done baking so they were just going to drop them by the church tomorrow.)

We all had a great time and I can not thank Shalom & Stephen enough for all they did, do, and how in everything they have gone above and beyond. (Shalom even drove the big white van around so Jed didn't have to worry about it stalling out on him!) We didn't leave the bakery until around 11pm! I felt really bad for Stephen as he still had plenty more baking to do before he was done for the night.

We dropped everyone off at the our home for the week and Jed, Terri & I took the big van out again to get it filled with gas before all the driving we were going to do tomorrow. While we were out a few things happened.
1. We decided we NEEDED to go get something to drink from Coffee Bean.
2. Found out that there a group of people playing cards in the hall.
3. Jed got a call from Kilby. He was just up the road (about 30ish minutes) for a training class.
4. Jed got a text from Mengyun. She had spent the afternoon and evening with some of her friends that live in the area. She was not going to be back until around 12:30AM and would need someone to let her in.

So after an eventful trip to Coffee Bean, we hatched a plan. I would go back to the preschool, play cards with everyone in the hall (SO FUN!!) while Jed would hit the road to go see Kilby. Then I would be in the preschool when Mengyun got back to let her in and I can do the same for Jed since we didn't have a key that worked.

The plan worked! Scott, Katie, Terri & I played Monopoly cards til we couldn't keep our eyes opened, I get the call from Mengyun at 12:30am to let her in and Jed followed suit at 1:45am. I think Mengyun & Jed both had a great time with friends that night so I am really glad they both had the chance to do it.