Reaching the City…

Through bringing the gospel to foster care social workers

Currently there are thousands of children in Los Angeles County being served by the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) who cannot safely live with their own   families due to abuse, neglect or abandonment.  These children need to be with a safe, stable, and loving family sometimes temporarily and sometimes permanently. (http://dcfs.co.la.ca.us)

The Department of Child and Family Services (DCFS) located in our community has over 750 staff alone!  These staff are so often unappreciated or thanked for their commitment to serve the children in our community.  Social workers work tirelessly advocating for children who are in harmful situations and we wanted to show appreciation and the love of Jesus to them by saying “thank you.”  Recently we have been partnering with a local church who is committed to bringing the love of Jesus into the foster care system!  We have formed a great relationship with the DCFS and were allowed to treat over 200 social workers to Yogurtland recently to say thank you for advocating for children in our community!  It was very humbling to see the gratitude in their faces and hear them tell us how touched they were as they felt that one ever thanks them for their work.  So many of the social workers thanked us again and again and told us how loved they felt and appreciated and ask us who we were and why were we doing this.  It was a blessing to us to show them Jesus’s love and build stronger relationships with the DCFS in order to bring the gospel of Jesus into the foster care system!!

Reaching the City…

Through Rescuing Women from Sex Trafficking

This month we partnered with EveryOne Free in Pomona to help provide services to women who are being trafficked.  With the help of Pomona Police and an undercover cop, flyers were distributed on the streets to invite the women to our event.  There were about 20 service   providers ranging from sexual assault, clothes for the women, safe houses, Azusa Pacific University nursing dept providing footcare, counseling, sexual abuse, treatments for drug and addictions, etc.  The women who came were each assigned a tour guide.  Each tour guide was a survivor of sex trafficking themselves.  This was the first outreach we had and plan on having another this October.  It was great to see 15 women come and begin to build trust and a relationship with us.  We are expecting more and more women to come as we continue to do these events.  But even with those who came, 2 of the women decided to leave the sex industry and go to a Christian safe house in Utah!  We praise God for rescuing these women from modern day sex slavery.