Thursday, April 9

holy ground prayer service

last night i attended a prayer service at st. theresa little flower, a catholic church in an area the kansas city star recently labeled the 'murder factory.'  my wife and i, along with a group of close friends, will be moving to this zip code in a few weeks and decided to make the trip from manhattan to be a part of this prayer service.

it is somewhat of a long story, how this all came to be, and so i'll spare you the details except for a few important ones.  God laid kansas city on the heart of a member of our group last semester, and he began to seek direction as to what exactly obedience to this call would look like.  meanwhile, my wife and i knew we were headed back to kansas city after i graduated to work, and wanted to resist the temptation of getting literally caught in a lifestyle of selfish spending on ourselves.  we began looking into other areas to live besides the ones we had known, and gradually we found that the Lord was leading us down a similar path as our friend.  we began praying together with a few others who were interested, asking God to give us direction on where to live and that he would lead people to our group if they were meant to live in community with us.  long story short, he brought together a group of 5 people and provided a place for us to live, which happens to be in the so-called murder factory, zip code 64130.  God truly does care for his children - he knew we needed a place to lay our heads at night and he laid it in our laps!

attending the prayer service last night was interesting and a little surreal; i felt my presence there was mostly as an observer rather than a participant.  though i felt unsure of how to engage with this new culture i am unfamiliar with, i enjoyed it greatly!  just to be there, to be at the prayer meeting for the area in which God has called us to live was wonderful.  we were actually there!  we had a presence!  i can't wait to move into the neighborhood.  it's going to be more difficult than i think i realize, but i'm ready to give all that He has made me to be for the task that has been laid before me.

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