Mobilizing the Church in the City for Action

The Coalition of Christian Foster Care Ministries, where Joseph serves on the leadership team, recently was a part of a Pastors Luncheon here in Los Angeles.  The luncheon was held for pastors to come together and learn more of the foster care epidemic in LA and how it impacts issues in the city.  How the mission of the church and  the Gospel of Jesus calls us to the ministry of fostering, adoption and advocacy. Nick Vujicic was a guest speaker and he shared his inspiring message of  insights he has learned of God’s hope and love through all he has been through (born without limbs).  Please pray for the churches within Los Angeles to be mobilized to serve the thousands of children in foster care within our area and to gain a heart for the orphaned.  We were able to invite churches to our next Ambassador Training in March where churches can receive training to begin a foster care  ministry within their church.  Please pray many churches would come be a part of our time. Here is a clip of Nick sharing his heart:
https://youtu.be/pTKVtlbCQpU

LA County Dept. Children & Family Services Data 2017-2018

• 18,228 children in out-of-home placement
• 6,841 in foster homes for more than 2 years
• 400-450 children waiting to be matched for adoption on any given day in LA

Child Characteristics:

 Birth-2yrs = 21%    3-4yrs =12%     5-9yrs =26%    10-13yrs = 18%   

      14-15yrs = 8%         16-17yrs = 8%     18yrs & older = 7%

Church Planting Assessments

Twice a year Joseph partners with the North America Mission Board to help do assessments for their new church planters.  He recently completed his 5th assessment this past week. They assessed 12 church planters.  The church planters are assessed in their calling to plant a church, social skills, their vision for the church and these 5 areas:

• • • Family Dynamics (do they have a strong marriage and family)
    • Communication (preaching)
    • Church Planting (evangelism and discipleship)
    • Leadership (how do they develop leaders and teams)
    • Wives (how does their wife feel about church planting, does she have good support as a wife/mom, friends)
    • Emotional Spiritual Health (are they emotionally mature, have they dealt with past history & hurts)
  

  Todd, Joseph, James and Kirk worked together to assess the new church planters.

  The North American Mission Board (NAMB) saw that many of their new churches were starting but then closing their doors after 4 years. They began this assessment time twice a year to help new churches become strong, healthy churches, have accountability, a strategy plan and to be able to reproduce into new churches.  After the assessments the church planters go onto further training and are eligible to receive monthly support from NAMB.

  FAMILY UPDATE

  From rain and cold to beautiful days—this winter is crazy!  We enjoyed a day in snow one weekend and a hike the next. 🙂 The kids are still busy with school and activities and Luke is enjoying his days in college.  We love that he is near and visits often!

  

  Thank you for your continual prayers and support to us and the ministry here in LA.  We are so grateful for all the Lord continues to do here in and through us.

   

Sex Trafficking Awareness month is in January. The statistics of trafficking nationwide, and especially right here in California are devastating. California is a destination state, meaning it’s a top location where traffickers bring victims and capture victims. Part of our focus in Cru City is to help fight this horrific evil and we are so thankful for the ways we have seen the Lord move as we work to bring prevention to the local schools, partner with other organizations and churches to bring awareness to the community and partner to bring spiritual mentorship and Jesus’ love to survivors in a local safe house near us.

“The situations that sex trafficking victims face vary dramatically. Many victims become romantically involved with someone who then forces or manipulates them into prostitution. Others are lured in with false promises of a job, such as modeling or dancing. Some are forced to sell sex by their parents or other family members. They may be involved in a trafficking situation for a few days or weeks, or may remain in the same trafficking situation for years.

Victims of sex trafficking can be U.S. citizens, foreign nationals, women, men, children, and LGBTQ individuals. Vulnerable populations are  frequently targeted by traffickers, including runaway and homeless youth, as well as victims of  domestic violence, sexual assault, war, or social discrimination. https://polarisproject.org/human-trafficking/sex-trafficking

*Ana, a survivor, who is now an advocate for women freed from trafficking—receiving some of the baskets to give to the ladies she works with.

This past December Michelle had the opportunity to share about sex trafficking and her work at a local safe house with the women’s study at our church.  The women there desired to show the love of Jesus to the women in the safe houses by making Welcome Baskets for them. 15-20 welcome baskets were created to give to the women during Christmas and 2019.  It was amazing to see the love these women put into the baskets and the prayers. They were received joyfully and it makes an amazing difference for these women to feel that someone cares for them and that they feel Jesus’ love through others.

Please continue to pray for these women.  Pray that they would experience the gospel and His true healing through their time at the safe house.  Pray for Michelle and the other women involved there—for wisdom in how to connect with these survivors, and being able to show patience and unconditional love to them as they begin their journey of healing.

Nepal Praise Report!

Pastor Krishna (on left) & Joseph (on right)

5000-6000 women and children are trafficked from Nepal to India each year. About a year ago after Joseph spoke at an   outreach to fight sex trafficking, a local Pastor (Pastor Krishna) asked if we could partner  together to end this evil and help the church planting efforts in Nepal. A year later, after many conversations, doubts, emails, MOUs, WhatsApp messages, raising the finances, and prayers over multiple cultures and languages, the project has  begun! Two Nepali women are now being trained in Mumbai, and they will return and train other women in  micro-enterprise of advanced sewing, garment bag making, and jewelry making – to empower the women and prevent further trafficking.  We are excited to see the church planting efforts in Nepal strengthened as well, since many women from the community are desiring to be a part of it. We have already seen 3 women put their trust in Jesus at the Nepali sewing centers!  Please be praying for these two women as they are being trained in Mumbai.  Pray for them after they leave the training and return to Nepal to begin teaching other women in Nepal at the sewing centers the skills they learned.  Ultimately that these women would gain valuable skills to keep them and their family out of poverty and the evils of  trafficking and that these women would hear the gospel through the church plants connected to the 5 sewing centers in Nepal!

Family Update…

We had a wonderful Christmas celebration as a family, loved having Luke home for a month from college and enjoyed many family times of games, movies, dinners together, and Christmas traditions.  As many of you know Joseph was in dire need of a newer car and the Lord blessed him with a wonderful car—thank you for everyone who prayed for his car need and gave financially. We are so very thankful.

We are Giving more than Bikes and Boards…We are Giving Love and a Sense of Belonging

PREVENT TRAFFICKING BY SERVING KIDS IN FOSTER CARE

Tamiko and Patti from Purpose Church

Last year we hosted a Foster Care Coalition Info Fair at Purpose Church in Pomona.  Members of the church and community attended to hear more about the foster care system here in Los Angeles and how they could be involved serving and loving the children in foster care.  Through this time Tamiko (the director of the Justice ministry at Purpose Church) gathered a team from her church to create a foster care ministry and an event “Bikes and Boards for Kids.”

Foster Care Coalition Info Fair

Studies estimate that between 50 and 80 percent of trafficked children in California are or were formally involved with the child welfare system. In a FBI 70-city nationwide raid, 60 percent of the victims came from foster care or group homes.  There is high need to prevent trafficking of children through serving kids in the foster care. system  Purpose Church is coming together to show the love of Jesus to the children in foster care within the Pomona area through donating bikes and skateboards to them.  Foster care children are targeted by traffickers because of their need for love, affirmation, and protection.

Victims are trained to call sex traffickers “daddies” and themselves “wifies” – a perverted reflection of the family unit that these children are seeking.  These children long for a family…even if it means being subjected to extreme violence and abuse. (CAS Research and Education)

As we are a part of the Coalition of Christian Foster Care Ministries http://www.fostercarecoalition.com we are thankful to see info fairs and trainings held in various churches and in turn these churches gaining a heart and a vision to make a different in the foster care community around them.  Please pray for this “Bikes and Boards for Kids” event.  That many from the church would be involved in serving the foster kids of the Pomona area and the children involved would experience the real love of Jesus through this event.

Empowering Women to Stop Sex Trafficking

Partnering together… Pastor Krishna and his ministry, Mercy Nepal; Kshamata (an organization in Mumbai, India that helps sex trafficking survivors begin new lives through job training) and Cru, Joseph and I.  Joseph has been meeting with Pastor Krishna as part of LA Reaching LA and encouraging/supporting him in his church planting throughout Nepal.

A Recent Church Plant in Nepal

Mercy Nepal has planted over 50 churches within Nepal and the believers there are passionate about seeing change in their community.  One sobering statistic in Nepal is that every year 5,000-6,000 women and children are trafficked from Nepal into India into the sex trafficking industry.  The traffickers target these women who live in poverty and promise good jobs in India for them (not knowing this job is sex trafficking).  5,000 to 6,000 women is unbelievable and the new churches in Nepal want to stop this evil.  Pastor Krishna approached Joseph to talk about how they could partner and help these women.  Through our connections we found the organization Kshamata located in Mumbai, India and asked if we could partner with them to help these women in Nepal.  We are raising the funds at this time to send 2 women from Nepal to Kshamata for one month.  There they will learn advanced tailoring and design, jewelry making, embroidery and embellishment.  Currently there are 4 training centers in Nepal that Mercy Nepal has formed.  These 2 women we send to Kshamata will bring these advanced skills back to the training centers and teach other women, therefore increasing the amount of women we can help and the advancing the skills needed for these women to be empowered.

Pastor Krishna at 1 of 4 Training Centers in Nepal

What we love the most about this partnership is the local churches in Nepal are coming together to share the gospel and serve the vulnerable women in Nepal— over 50 churches have been planted with over 500 baptisms. Please pray for this partnership.  Pray that we could raise the funds needed to send the first 2 women in December, pray for the churches in Nepal to continue to spread the share the gospel and be able to help these women and pray for the vulnerable women of Nepal.  That this evil would be stopped and the vast amount of women being trafficked from Nepal to India would end.  Here is a video Pastor Krishna created about the sex trafficking crisis in Nepal… https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3vdp7HaoYF4

Thank you for your continual prayers, encouragement and support to us.  We are so thankful for each of you know the work we do here in LA would not be possible without all the prayers and support of so many.  Thank you! 

What is a Church Planting Cohort?

Us with Pastor Reuben from Solid Rock Church

As we have been working in Cru City the past 3 years the Lord has done some amazing things in terms of helping churches grow in their evangelism, discipleship, leadership development and multiplication.  One area we have seen a need for is more training and encouragement to those starting out as pastors and planting churches. Joseph and Pastor Ruben, from Solid Rock Church, have developed an 8 month interactive training for people who desire to plant a church.  They reworked it from the Gospel Coalition and Acts 29 organization.  It is a seminary level training including videos, coaching, discussions, articles, field assignments and textbook readings.  The heart behind this new cohort is to help church planters and planting teams with practical steps on how to start a new church.

Ranji and Joseph at his 60th Birthday Celebration!

Two of these new church plants we are helping are with a husband and wife (Ranji and Neela) who have a call to start a church reaching out to the Sinhalese speaking people of Sri Lanka. This will be the first Sinhalese speaking Sri Lankan church in Los Angeles.  It will also be bi-lingual to have a place for the younger generation of Sri Lankan’s to come to know the Lord.

The other plant we are helping to start is with a husband and wife (Hunter and Gabby) who desire to plant a multi-ethnic church in the Pomona area. Pomona is a very diverse city with only 12% of the population being Caucasian.  Pomona faces high amounts of poverty, crime, sex trafficking, gangs and foster care needs.

A recent Church Cohort training time! (Hunter is on the far left and his wife Gabby second from the right) Ranji is to the right of Joseph

Both Ranji and Neela, as well as Hunter and Gabby are from Solid Rock Church that we helped plant 3 years ago. We love seeing churches not only have a heart for their own congregation but also to reach out with the gospel to the cities around them.  To send out their own members to begin churches in different cities reaching those who are far from God, so they can hear about the love of Jesus.

 How do you stop sex trafficking with children?

We are beginning to plan and connect with local schools in sharing our trafficking prevention curriculum.  The Lord blessed us with the opportunity to share with schools throughout the Los Angeles area the past couple years—being a part of sex trafficking prevention.  The average age girls are trafficked into prostitution in the US is 12-14 years old; and boys is 11-13 years old.  Those are devastating statistics and as we work with survivors here in Los Angeles those statistics now have real faces behind them.  Survivors that Michelle meets with started out at this young age and that is why we feel it is so important to be a part of the  prevention of what is happening—to stop the evil and pain before it happens.

We are partnered with an organization, EveryOne Free, in Pomona. Joseph is on the leadership team there and has helped developed the trafficking curriculum we utilize in the local schools.  This year EveryOne Free has two interns, Yemi and Vintsy, that Joseph is training to help him do the curriculum at South Junior High again this year.  We have a longstanding relationship with this school and speak there every quarter to over 800 7th graders on sex trafficking prevention. Yemi is finishing her Masters of Social Work at Azusa Pacific University and Vintsy is finishing her Bachelor Of Social Work at the same school. Joseph will be training Yemi and Vintsy, who will also begin to speak at additional junior highs and high schools in the Los Angeles area.   Please pray for them as they speak at these schools—that the Lord would use them to help children understand what trafficking is and to be aware of the signs  – to prevent this evil from growing.

FAMILY UPDATE….

School is in full swing, Luke is adjusting well to the College Life. He tells us he enjoys having classes beginning after 10am! 🙂  And we are still blessed to see him once in a while and recently spent a family day at the Fair!

Aleeya just celebrated her 4 year “hearing birthday.” She received her 1st cochlear  implant at age 2.5 and is doing amazing in her listening and speaking, she works so hard.

Partnering with an Elementary School and Serving the Community

Richard (who shared his testimony) and Joseph

Epiphany Fellowship Los Angeles has a  wonderful partnership with 54th St. Elementary in South Los Angeles offering an after school program and mentoring to the children. This past month we hosted a Sports and Performing Arts Camp to the children of South LA.  In the inner city there are very limited resources for parents and their children. 54th St. Elementary invited the kids of the school as well as the community to be a part of this week long camp.  Oceanside Christian Fellowship in El Segundo partnered with us as well to have their congregation serve with us as a 1 week local missions trip from their church!

It was an amazing week serving the community, loving on the children there and sharing the  gospel to the kids and parents.  The community was very responsive and wished it could have been longer for their kids.  We offered Hip Hop Dance Class, Acting Class taught by Christian actors and producers within the church, a   Soccer Clinic, a Football Clinic run by former football player from USC and the NFL and a football coach, and a parenting forum for the parents giving insight in raising their children.

Throughout the week the coaches and volunteers shared Bible Verses and godly principles.  The end of the week accumulated with a finale showcase for the children to show their  parents what they had learned and Richard from Epiphany Fellowship LA sharing his testimony to the children and parents.  It was a powerful, amazing week to the community of South Los Angeles.  Please check out the playlist we made below on YouTube highlighting the week!  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQjQrSbz0XP9Sc-tEYYGkNCkPQMYl-DXA

The Changing Face of Evangelism

This past February Joseph was asked to be a part of Cru’s Church Movements National Team.

He is helping to shape the direction in which Cru partners with hundreds of churches,denominations, seminaries and church planting networks.  This has been an exciting opportunity for him as he loves being a part of this team that is helping churches and Cru to partner together to spread the gospel and the love of Christ throughout the United States.

One aspect he has been developing with the Church Movements National Team is a training called: The Changing Face of Evangelism and the Well-Being of the City. It is a half-day  training for leaders evangelism within churches and movements that includes:

• Barriers to Evangelism
• Tools in Sharing Your Faith
• The Three Modes of Evangelism
• Sessions for Pastors and Missional Leaders helping them think and lead in terms of evangelism in the Church.

In the Fall Joseph will be leading one of these training times with multiple churches within Los Angeles.  Thank you for continuing to pray for this and for believers to gain a passion to share their faith—only 5% of believers share their faith.

Family Update…

We are treasuring this summer as we prepare for Luke to go to Cal Poly Pomona this Fall.  It is a hard   transition for us to see our oldest to go on to college but we are excited for the plans the Lord has for him.  Please continue to pray for Him (and us!) during this transition to college and adulthood.

During the last year the Lord has been moving in amazing ways through the churches here in Los Angeles! New Believers, New Baptisms, Community Outreaches into the neighborhoods and schools,  leadership development times, discipleship of women and men, and times of prayer and encouragement to others.  One of the churches, Epiphany Fellowship Los Angeles, Joseph has been working with, had their “official” launch service of their church on Easter Sunday and now are seeing 40-50 people attend regularly.  Epiphany recently formed a partnership with a local school in South Central Los Angeles (teachers pictured above at the local school).  The principal at this elementary school is a believer and they have been able to provide mentoring through an after school program at the school!  Epiphany also partnered with The Children’s Hunger Fund to provide regular meals to families in need that they develop  relationships with through the after school program.   This past Sunday Epiphany also celebrated with their first baptisms— 4 people desired to be baptized! Seeing so many lives changed with the love of Jesus! Through equipping churches in leadership development, prayer, outreaches, and evangelism within Los Angeles we have been blessed to see these  churches reaching the communities around them with the gospel of Jesus and lives are being transformed!

As this summer is drawing near our family is celebrating the graduation of Luke from High School and entering into college!  How did the years go by so fast? He will be going to Cal Poly Pomona entering into Kinesiology and we are so very proud of him and excited for the plans the Lord has for him.

Another update we have is a need for an updated car for  Joseph.  As he travels throughout the Los Angeles area he puts a lot of miles on his car and his current one is barely hanging on.  We recently hit 200,000 miles on his current car!  Because of this we are desiring to raise $5,000 to $7,000 to replace his current car this summer.

If you are able to help, go to http://give.cru.org/0487483 and follow the instructions. If you prefer to write a check, please make it  payable to ‘Cru’ with our account number #0487483 and you can mail it to the address below.  However the Lord may lead you to  respond, we are grateful for all your prayers and support.  Thank you!  We hope you have a wonderful summer as well and cherish the days with family and friends.

“For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism. And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives.” Romans 6:4

EASTER CELEBRATIONS!

It brings us such joy to see the new lives the Lord has been raising up within the churches we are partnered with.  This Easter was a wonderful Celebration thanking the Lord for all His works!  Our family celebrated Easter with Epiphany Fellowship in Los Angeles as they had their Grand Opening Service in the Crenshaw YMCA!  It was so encouraging to worship with them and see how the Lord has been using them to reach the South LA Area and witness the many people who came to their opening service.

At Celebracion Latina in Covina Joseph had helped Pastor Marco plan an Easter Outreach Service and our good friend, Rachid, shared his testimony on how he came to know the Lord from an Muslim background. One woman who came to the outreach gave her life to the Lord!  Here is a link to hear more! https://youtu.be/D33jcYJMeFg

And at Solid Rock in Claremont, where Joseph has been working closely with Pastor Ruben to train leaders within the church, they had a wonderful service with 3 people being baptized and 7 more in May for Mother’s Day! 

 We truly feel humbled to be able to witness lives changed through these churches reaching out to their communities that the Lord has called them to.

END IT MOVEMENT!

The average age a girl enters sex trafficking is 12-14 years old.  The average age a boy enters is 11-13 years old.  Junior High Age.  That is why we count it a privilege to be able to go into the public junior highs in high risk areas and teach on sex trafficking prevention.  One school, South Junior High, in Anaheim has allowed us to come and speak to all their junior highers every single year—as part of their health curriculum!  Through this we were so encouraged to see these students put together an End It Campaign to raise more awareness at their school about sex trafficking and how to prevent it.  Here is a video explaining more about the END IT CAMPAIGN at the local school!

https://youtu.be/BpvOV-zIXrY

#ENDITMOVEMENT

IS A COALITION OF THE LEADING ORGANIZATIONS IN THE WORLD IN THE FIGHT FOR FREEDOM. EACH OF OUR AMAZING COALITION PARTNERS ARE    DOING THE WORK, ON THE GROUND, EVERYDAY, TO BRING AWARENESS, PREVENTION, RESCUE, AND RESTORATION.

https://enditmovement.com

FAMILY UPDATE!

Life is full and full of so many emotions right now!  Our oldest boy, Luke, will be graduating High School this May.  So many emotions to think of his graduating!  He is in the fun last days of school events, Prom, Graduation, etc..  Please pray for him and us as we process so many changes and emotions. Daniel is finishing up the 10th grade and beginning driving classes! Jessica is finishing 7th grade and Aleeya finishes up Kindergarten.

Thank you for your continual prayers and support to us.  We are so grateful for your prayers for our children, marriage and ministry. We thank the Lord for each one of you.

Every 40 seconds someone in the world dies by suicide; every 41 seconds someone is left to make sense of it…

SUICIDE is a permanent solution for a temporary problem. Suicide ends a temporary pain and can leaves a heart ache in those who love us for the rest of their lives. 

Joseph is on the leadership of LA Reaching LA, a network of pastors and church planters. This network provides training and coaching in the areas of leadership development, church planting strategy and evangelism. One morning, at a monthly training breakfast with LA Reaching LA, a pastor from a Spanish speaking bilingual church nearby, Celebración Latina, came to speak with Joseph.

“Can I meet with you, and can you help me with evangelism?” asked Pastor Marco.

Marco began conducting quarterly outreaches and encouraging the people from his church to bring their friends. He had a former gang member share his testimony, and 8 people came to faith and have been baptized. At this last outreach, 17 people came to faith after hearing the difference Christ had made for a suicide survivor! As the outreaches continue, the church has formed an outreach team. Our partnership helped to provide the motivation for evangelism and testimony speakers that this church body needed and it is so exciting to see many people from the community come to know Jesus, be baptized and become involved in the church!

To see a clip of the testimony shared at the outreach

check out this link: https://youtu.be/j0BlURpqjV4

A New National Role

This past February Joseph was invited to share at our National Cru City Conference, for those working within cities, about the ministry God is doing here in Los Angeles.  It is our desire to see churches multiply through evangelism, discipleship and through raising up leaders within the church. Joseph shared at the conference about one church we had helped form in Claremont that is now starting a Sinhalese speaking Sri Lankan Church, the first in LA ! 

During the conference Joseph was asked to be a part of Cru’s Church Movements National Team.  He will help shape the direction in which Cru partners with hundreds of churches, denominations, seminaries and church planting networks.  He is excited to be a part of this team as he enjoys seeing “the big picture” and visions for the future of churches and Cru partnering together to spread the gospel and the love of Christ beyond Los Angeles to cities throughout the United States.  This new role will still allow Joseph to continue to minister and live in Los Angeles, but will require a little more traveling.

FAMILY UPDATE:

Our girl, Jessica, just celebrated her 13th Birthday!  It is so hard to believe she is already a teenager.  We spent the day with her drinking tea, seeing horses and going to a play her friends were in.  Then dinner and cake as a family that evening. She is a beautiful girl, inside and out, and we are so thankful for her.

Aleeya is loving her jazz dance classes and preparing for a recital in June. Luke just finished playing his last season of basketball for our city league—it was so sad to see this season come to an end as it is his last now that he is graduating.  Daniel continues to bring joy to our home through his music and continues to be stretched on the track team running long distance!

Thank you for your continual prayers and support to us. We thank the Lord for each one of you.

Church Planting Legend ‘Loved Everyone No Matter What’

Don approached Joseph about 2 years ago and asked him to help lead a church planting organization called LARLA (Los Angeles Reaching Los Angeles).  Little did we know that through our partnership with LARLA our ministry would be so blessed and our lives so touched by the founder, Don Overstreet.  Don quickly became a friend and mentor to Joseph as a man who loved Jesus deeply and had given his entire life to serve Him in Los Angeles and around the world.  He was a part of launching more than 500 churches worldwide in his 50 years of ministry and his heart’s cry was to love everyone no matter what.  To share the love of Jesus with all.  Don passed away in December and we were blessed to share in his Celebration of Life and saw hundreds of lives he had touched right here in LA. Please pray for, LARLA, that Don had founded.  It is continuing with our leadership team and we are praying the Lord would continue to use it to saturate Los Angeles with the love of Jesus through the churches. What God has done in a little over 2 years is incredible and God is still moving powerfully ! We wanted to share some amazing praises of what the Lord has done through LARLA these past 2 years and through our leadership team (pictured below) pouring into the lives of pastors throughout LA.

We are currently working with 115 new churches! 62 in LA County and 50 all over the world. We have helped start indigenous churches all over LA.

• 20 Spanish Speaking Churches
• 7 Iranian-Armenian Churches
• 2 Nepali Churches
• 1 Nigerian Church
• 1 Kenyan Church
• 31 Multi-Cultural Churches
• And around the world in: Nepal, Philippines, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Tanzania, Cameroon, Kenya, Northern India, and Thailand.
• We have  Provided 35 Jesus Film backpacks, 4 sets of puppets (to India and Cameroon) and a motor scooter for a church planter in the Philippines.

Gospel Changes Lives from Slavery to Hope

I praise you, for I am fearfully and  wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. –  Psalm 139:14

Michelle has had the blessing of being able to be a  spiritual mentor to women in a trafficking ministry (Redeeming Love) that we are partnered with.  Redeeming Love has a safe house where women are rescued from trafficking and find peace, trauma therapy, education or job skills training, healing and experience the love of Jesus.  Each week she is part of a Bible Study with these women for exploring the faith and she also meets weekly with the ladies for spiritual mentorship.  *M and *S are 2 women in the program who recently gave their lives over to Jesus and were baptized!  God is so good! Please pray for their love for Jesus and desire to follow Him.  Please pray for these ladies as they heal from so much intense trauma, finish their high school diploma, gain job skills and begin college, and allow the Lord to heal the deep pains in their lives.  Please pray for Michelle as she loves on them and helps them seek the Lord with their questions, process life and help them to continue to grow in their relationships with the Lord.

As we do believe that every past can be redeemed, repurposed and made new.

Family Update…

Luke is awaiting college news and continuing to pray about his next steps.  Daniel is now doing track at the High School as well as recently competed in a Skills USA competition in videotech. He did a great job scoring 14th out of 65.  Aleeya has begun a jazz dance class and loves it and Jess continues to love her dance classes.  Life is full! Thank you for your encouragement, prayers and support to us and the ministry here in Los Angeles!

Human Trafficking Awareness Month

January is Human Trafficking Awareness Month.  Human trafficking is a form of modern slavery—a multi-billion dollar criminal industry that denies freedom to 20.9 million people around the world. And no matter where you live, chances are it’s happening nearby. From the girl forced into prostitution at a truck stop, to the man discovered in a restaurant kitchen, stripped of his passport and held against his will. All trafficking victims share one essential experience: the loss of freedom. (PolarisProject.org)

Did you know there are:

• 20-30 Million people trafficked Worldwide
• 80% female, 50% children
• 1.5 million in the US alone

It breaks our hearts that  trafficking is all around us now.  California harbors 3 of the FBI’s 13 highest child sex trafficking areas on the  nation: Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego.  Part of our focus in ministry is partnering with ministries and churches that are fighting sex trafficking within Los Angeles to help prevent children from the lure of traffickers as well as bring hope and the gospel to survivors rescued from trafficking.  A couple months back we were a part of an outreach to the community with a survivor named Emily, who shared her story.  Emily now works to help other women escape from trafficking and find healing.  Through Emily a young girl named *R was rescued by the police out of sex trafficking near us.  Emily connected her to a ministry, Redeeming Love, whom we partner with.  Redeeming Love provides a safe house for sex trafficking survivors and brings them job training, trauma therapy and the love of Jesus.  *R has now been in the program for 2 months working through school and trauma therapy.  Michelle is now connecting with her weekly as a spiritual mentor.  Please pray for *R as she has faced a great deal of spiritual  persecution.  Pray for her as she seeks to know “Who is God and Jesus?” and struggles in her self worth and the path ahead of her in emotional freedom and caring for  herself.  Pray she would come to know Jesus deeply and allow Him to satisfy those painful places of hurt within her. 

• • Average Age Children Enter Trafficking:

Girls: 12-14 yearsold
Boys: 11-13 years old

•  86% were from social services or foster care when they ran away and were lured into trafficking.
  

This is why there is such a need to help these young children know the signs of sex trafficking and how to prevent it from happening to them.  The Lord has opened up so many opportunities for Joseph and 2 interns from a ministry we partner with (EveryOne Free) to speak at JH and HS public schools.  One Christian health teacher of  a JH school in a high risk area has asked us to come every quarter and share with all 800  7th graders in her health classes.

• 76% of sex trafficking incidents begins on the internet or through social media— Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Kik

When we share in the schools we ask a show of hands of how many of them have been approached online through one of these apps by a trafficker.  It saddens us each time to see the many hands raised and then to hear personal stories of many of them who have been approached.

Please continue to pray that the Lord would lead us to the schools He desires to us to share at and  for His protection over the children that traffickers are targeting.

Family Update… 

We hope you had a wonderful Christmas and New Year! We enjoyed a relaxing time at home, exploring LA, finding “fake” snow 🙂 and seeing family.  Thank you for your encouragement, prayers and support to us and the ministry here in Los Angeles!