Wednesday. LOVE:EssentialChurch2013

Wow!  Today has been a long day and I'll probably let the pictures tell much of our story. Yesterday we nearly melted in 90 degree heat and today we awoke thinking we were back in South Carolina. The skies were grey and temps were in the 60s.

 We made our way to our first assignment, back at the thrift store where we discovered it was 

The store offered discounts from 40% to 79% and it was full of customers. Our group went to work organizing merchandise for the whole morning. 

This man entertained us with great piano music while we were there. 

After lunch, we made a quick stop at our hotel to change clothes and headed to Jubilee Reach which is a beautiful facility that ministers in the community by mentoring both adults and teens.  Check out their web sight because it's very impressive. We'll be working more closely with them tomorrow. 

Today we immediately went into the neighborhood near the facility to invite residents to tonight's block party and to pray for those homes we visited. It's Warren's goal for his church to pray for every family in Bellevue and we were privileged to be part of reaching that goal. 

By six we were back at Jubilee Reach and once again the Southside group was busy feeding people. Schuyler makes a great grill master. I can't even estimate how many hot dogs he cooked but the number was in the hundreds. The rest of us formed an assembly line to get the food to the people. 

That's our day. We limped home after almost twelve hours. But, of course, the story isn't about us. The exciting part of the story is the people we met. If you want to be involved in world missions, come to Seattle. Tonight, we fed Hispanics, African Americans, East Indians, Asians, and Anglos.   With many of them we had to communicate by hand motions and, as Elizabeth says, with our eyes. The people have been so accepting of us!  We were excited tonight to see some of the people we invited this afternoon.

  Pray that they felt Christ's love and that they remember Essential Church and the love they'll find there on Sunday. 

Thanks to a stubborn server, I wasn't able to include the pictures so stay tuned for a pictorial update early tomorrow. Thanks for all your prayers. We love you. Lyda