Well, most of you know that Sal and I have had the opportunity to build some fairly strong relationships with our neighbors here in Louisville. We live on, what we often refer to as, the "5th Bloc." Anyway, we have decided to dedicate our porch swing to taking part in our efforts to love our neighbors. We are now the proud owners of a digital camera (finally up with the times) and we plan to use our camera to photograph those people who come over and sit our swing, as this has included a fairly wide range of folks. We hope to take those pictures and then create some sort of artwork that would represent our passion and hope for taking the Good News to the "5th Bloc." So...in light of that, I thought this would be a great time to ask each of you to share about your neighborhoods and the relationships that you have been able to build with those living on your block and on your street...So...who will be first to share?
5 comments:
picture coming soon...somthing was wrong with the website tonight.
Lauren and I have great neighbors. On one side we have Bill and Rhonda. Bill is a trying-to-retire painter. He painted the whole living room in our house in about 30 min!! He has allowed me to use many of his tools. I have been able to return alot of his favors. They attend Bethel Temple Assembly of God. I believe him and his wife are Christians from the conversations that we have had. On the other side we have Buddy and Cindy. They are retired and are gone every weekend in their RV. They let us go swimming in their pool whenever they are out of town. We dont know them quite as well as Bill and Rhonda but hopefully we will get there someday with them. Thats our neighbors!!
thanks for sharing curt-bo-burt.
tell your wife hello...and that we are praying for her and the babe.
Please don’t do that thing with my name! Thanks for sharing your burden with us for your neighbors. We have been seeking to build relationships as we walk and ride our bikes around the neighborhood. It is certainly hard to miss our parade as we walk or ride our bikes down the street and bike trail. Another way we have had a chance to meet folks and share our worldview and the Gospel is at the neighborhood playground (I might view the picnic table there much the way you view your swing, Clif. We have found the most effective times to be there is on the weekends. We often go there during the week but found that typical families with busy programmed schedules aren’t there. We have been there a couple times on Sunday evenings and found a ton of people there that we have never met before. One family we have had 3 or 4 contacts with is a young Hindu/Indian (actually a very mixed bag of beliefs by another name) family. Swati and Shelendrah (sp?) have been very excited about talking with us and getting to know us. They have a one year old little girl and they are very vegetarian which has presented a challenge to the prospect of us having them over for a meal! Others of our neighbors we are trying to build relationships with and praying for are Troy and Jenny (with whose children our children play with in the backyard), Heather and Mark (Heather is a cellist and Mark a Phys Ther. – Lutherans), and Rumel and Anika (who actually own an investment property by us and are currently doing work on it). Others - actually the ones right next door are tougher nuts to crack – Julie who has two junior high boys has heard the Gospel but is pretty closed off and then a guy named Chris on the other side who lives with his folks. Chris and I had one discussion about sin in which he told me he stopped doing bad things when he got out of high school so we have quite a bit of ground to cover on that one.
Given Christ’s teaching on who our neighbors are (Good Samaritan) we have even more ground to cover as we live in our community and make connections with the gas station attendant (mine is the BP guy on main named O’Connor), the grocery store clerk, and the families to whom April gives music lessons – I could go on forever.
I think though that we all need to learn to rely on the Holy Spirit as we seek wisdom in building these relationships regarding how we communicate the Big Picture of God’s truth with these folks. Do we give nuggets and a bucketful of truth here and there as we maintain these relationships and seek to win them or do we dump the truckload of truth on them? I think much of that has to do with an understanding of making disciples vs. simply getting converts. Okay – this got a lot longer than I anticipated – so all for now.
Clif and Sally,
This is so very exciting to me!!!!! I decided to invite Tiim and Jeanetta to garden with us this spring so we could have closer contact with them and work with them in verious areas of their life. Just a couple of weeks ago Tim prayed with Daddy and asked the Lord to save his.So now the real work comes, discipling them. It is a real yo-yo.
I took this short term job at the phone book office. It was a opportunity to make a little money for our trip to NY.
and the Lord has given me a great opportunity to work across the table from Jeanetta's sister Marie who is a very ungodly person. So I've been able to live Christ before her and say a few things to her. And the man who is the boss, Joe is his name, has asked a few questions. They won't talk about some things and are careful to watch their language because the preachers wife is here.
I hope to give him and another manweh works there a DVD of the Gospel before we bread office. Joe leaver this Sat so I'll have to give it to him Fri. Please pray for me that I will have an opportunity and that I will say the right things to him.
Up on the hill from us we have a family with2 children who have come to church about 3 times. He drives a truck and she stays home. She brings the children down to the swings so I try to talk to her. Their names also had a card to people inviting them to call a number to get a free
This is great. I just wrote a long thing about my neighbors, hit the wrong key and wiped it all out. I'll have to do it over later.But, please pray for me as I work this week. On Fri if hope to give a DVD of the Gospel to Joe my boss at the phone book office.
WE are having a great Family Bible Conf this week.
More later. You all keep up the goode work!!!!
Love to you all,
Mom
Post a Comment