Isaiah is skipping preschool today. I kept him home because of an individual who verbally threatened his teachers yesterday. We are fortunate to have a very secure facility, and our teachers are savvy. But after a restless night I didn't feel peaceful about sending him. The person causing problems lives very near the park, and his household was involved with several criminal incidents this fall. Our block club has been working with our LAPD senior lead officer to curb the threat they pose to our neighborhood's safety. But outside of television dramas, stopping perceived bad guys is a slow and fragile process. The policies and bureaucracies that preserve our civil rights sometimes leave preschoolers more vulnerable than we would like.
Ironically, at 10:00am today the LA City Council started debating a proposal to eliminate one of our best tools in neighborhood crime prevention. Richard is at City Hall right now speaking for our community in support of the City Attorney's Neighborhood Prosecutor program. In 18 years of work around public safety concerns, we have often run into the limits of what the police can do. For the past 7 years, the Neighborhood Prosecutor has filled this gap in critical ways. When our community organized to shut down a liquor store on Jefferson we worked with the Neighborhood Prosecutor. When the Raymond Ave block club succeeded in shutting down a crack house it was through the efforts of the Neighborhood Prosecutor. When the neighbors around our tutoring center stopped a bar from opening across the street they worked with the Neighborhood Prosecutor. And the Neighborhood Prosecutor is helping our block club address the latest threats to our children's safety within the local park.
So often the forces that most affect our health and safety are silent and unseen. We did not hear about this city council vote until yesterday afternoon. And amidst the many budget cuts our city is considering, this won't be one to get front page attention. But we who live here remember what it was like to live down the street from a liquor store. We remember what it was like to walk our Adventures Ahead kids past prostitutes and drug dealers on their way to our facility. We remember what it was like to have shootings, stabbings and robberies on Raymond Avenue. And we remember that the relative peace we now enjoy in these places came through hard won victories. These victories might not have been won without this program connecting our community groups to real legal muscle.
Will our park remain a safe place for families to play? Will our preschoolers and their teachers remain unharmed? Will the marijuana distributor around the corner and the liquor stores on Adams and Normandie be held accountable for nuisance activity? Will residents of our neighborhood feel like they can speak, act and organize to bring about change? Much depends on the how our city council votes with regard to this program.
Things to pray for:
For our city council to continue funding the Neighborhood Prosecutor program.
For God to set his protection over Loren Miller Park, especially the preschool program.
For violence and criminal activity at the household described above to cease.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Monday, February 1, 2010
REEL Joy's Around the Corner
Church of the Redeemer, Redeemer Community Partnership and Street Lamp Studios will be putting on our third annual "REEL Joy" program. As I've mentioned in other posts "REEL Joy" is a great opportunity to engage youth in our neighborhood with God through film. We partner with professional filmmakers to teach youth to make their own short films from scratch - they do everything from writing scripts to rehearsing scenes to learning camera work. They've done some awesome, creative stuff in the past which you can check out here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWn6TgwuFjI&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipubH5IkH44
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQo8ks7KqPE
This year our theme is "Young Heroes" and we'll take a look at some young heroes in scripture. Our hope is that God will inspire faith in our youth that leads to acts of courage, compassion and truth in their daily lives. We want the youth to know that God loves them, has created them for good and has a great plan for their lives.
We'd love to have your prayers. We begin this Wednesday 2/3 and will meet on the following two Wed's as well. Then on 2/20 we'll have a filming day and, finally, a celebration screening event to show the films to the youth, their families and others in the neighborhood. Here are some specific prayer requests:
Youth
- Boldness for our youth to invite their friends and share about God
- New seeds of faith to be planted through our time in scripture and fellowship
- Hospitality, patience and love from our youth group extended to new youth
- An absence of violence and hostility between youth; new friendships to develop
Adult staff
- Wise, compassionate, Spirit-led leadership by our adult staff
- I’ll be teaching a lesson this week about Daniel and the Lion’s Den. The lesson is unfinished and I welcome your prayers for wisdom and diligence in finishing it.
- I'm struggling with anxiety. While there are several things that need to be coordinated before Wed, I think that most of the anxiety is coming from the desire to have an awesome, "successful" program - lots of kids attending, many new YG members, conversions etc. Please pray that our staff and I would serve faithfully and be content with how God moves.
Here are some new youth we’re inviting. Pray for their interest, for trust with their parents and for them to come with an open heart this Wed!
- Jordan, Kimberly, Ibrahim, Malik and two others
- Andrew, Calvin, Enrique, Luis, Ezekel, Joswe, MaryAnnie
- Taye, Devon and Gianni
There are also youth who have been a part of our youth group that no longer attend regularly. We’d love to see them come out again for REEL Joy this Wed.
- Jamie, Robby, Joseph, Jose, Judith, DeAngelo, Oscar, Marvin, Carla, Wendy, Yescenia and Kyrum all used to fairly regular to our youth group
- Jnye, Erskin, Shantiana, Diana, Sabrina, Cristina, Martina, Carmen and Tania have come a handful of times or less
- We’re hoping to have this year’s screening at the an actual movie theater, the University Village 3.
Thanks for your partnership and prayers!
Elliot
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWn6TgwuFjI&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipubH5IkH44
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQo8ks7KqPE
This year our theme is "Young Heroes" and we'll take a look at some young heroes in scripture. Our hope is that God will inspire faith in our youth that leads to acts of courage, compassion and truth in their daily lives. We want the youth to know that God loves them, has created them for good and has a great plan for their lives.
We'd love to have your prayers. We begin this Wednesday 2/3 and will meet on the following two Wed's as well. Then on 2/20 we'll have a filming day and, finally, a celebration screening event to show the films to the youth, their families and others in the neighborhood. Here are some specific prayer requests:
Youth
- Boldness for our youth to invite their friends and share about God
- New seeds of faith to be planted through our time in scripture and fellowship
- Hospitality, patience and love from our youth group extended to new youth
- An absence of violence and hostility between youth; new friendships to develop
Adult staff
- Wise, compassionate, Spirit-led leadership by our adult staff
- I’ll be teaching a lesson this week about Daniel and the Lion’s Den. The lesson is unfinished and I welcome your prayers for wisdom and diligence in finishing it.
- I'm struggling with anxiety. While there are several things that need to be coordinated before Wed, I think that most of the anxiety is coming from the desire to have an awesome, "successful" program - lots of kids attending, many new YG members, conversions etc. Please pray that our staff and I would serve faithfully and be content with how God moves.
Here are some new youth we’re inviting. Pray for their interest, for trust with their parents and for them to come with an open heart this Wed!
- Jordan, Kimberly, Ibrahim, Malik and two others
- Andrew, Calvin, Enrique, Luis, Ezekel, Joswe, MaryAnnie
- Taye, Devon and Gianni
There are also youth who have been a part of our youth group that no longer attend regularly. We’d love to see them come out again for REEL Joy this Wed.
- Jamie, Robby, Joseph, Jose, Judith, DeAngelo, Oscar, Marvin, Carla, Wendy, Yescenia and Kyrum all used to fairly regular to our youth group
- Jnye, Erskin, Shantiana, Diana, Sabrina, Cristina, Martina, Carmen and Tania have come a handful of times or less
- We’re hoping to have this year’s screening at the an actual movie theater, the University Village 3.
Thanks for your partnership and prayers!
Elliot
Monday, January 25, 2010
Winter Retreat Recap
Dear Friends and Family,
Last weekend hundreds of youth from urban, inner-city communities around Southern and Central California descended upon The Oaks Christian Camp and Conference Center. World Impact, an inner-city Christian church planting organization, hosted its annual Winter Teen retreat. Our youth ministry met at 8 am last Saturday to make the hour and a half drive to camp. It w
as the first time we have attended and boy was it a great time (even with the crazy wind and rain)!
By and large the retreat was planned and organized by World Impact staff – everything from activities, to food, to accommodations, to the speaker. This enabled our youth ministry staff and me to focus our energies entirely on relational time with our youth. What a blessing! Whether it was time spent eating delicious dining hall food, enjoying daring activities like paintball and the high ropes course, or hanging out in our cabins l
ate at night, the adult staff were around our youth 24 hours a day for the entire weekend. It’s definitely a frenetic pace that can’t be sustained for very long, but for a weekend it felt like such a rich gift and opportunity to partner with God in loving our youth.
With our abundance of relational time and the calm of being in a place far from the inner-city, God created space for the youth to share painful experiences where God has felt distant. One youth shared of his recent suicidal thoughts. Another shared the feeling of fear that overwhelmed him when his loving father was arrested by the police, seemingly out of the blue. Another shared of the hopelessness she felt at school, of being a good student and getting good grades. Several others resonated with these stories and shared similar stories of their own.
It became clear that
school and home, typically places of nurture, love and development, are instead places of darkness, pain and insecurity. In these places we challenged and encouraged our youth to know that God is present, as it says in the Psalm 139:11-12 “If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,’ even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for the darkness is as light with you.” Several prayed for faith to believe that God is present in their ups and downs. As we return to Los Angeles, I hope that we will continue walking with our youth and God through these difficult places.
Another highlight of the weekend is difficult to quantify so I’ll just describe it the best I can. Prior to the retreat, we were a youth group. We’d hit a good rhythm with our Wed night and Sunday morning gatherings. People knew each other, were friendly and generally enjoyed being together. After retreat it felt more like family. We’ve become a youth group family, brothers and sisters in Christ across race, gender and geography! We hung out together in the dining hall playing silly games enjoying each others’ presence. We sung loudly and proudly for our friend Ingrid who celebrated her birthday at camp. We saved seats for each other in the auditorium. We stuck together and played honestly as a team in the camp scavenger hunt. We shared our stories and testimonies while listening to others. God knit us together like a family.
I find the timing of all this to be a really exciting development. In February we’re planning our third annual “REEL Joy,” an arts-based, film-making, evangelistic outreach event that culminates with a screening of the youths’ films in early March. My hope and prayer is that many new youth in our neighborhood will come for the opportunity to act in and make a short film, and then stay in our youth group because they’ve been touched by the love of Christ. In the past REEL Joy has been a volatile mix of youth from different parts of the neighborhood who are taught to not get along. Please
pray for our youth and adult staff to demonstrate Christ in word and deed as we invite others to join our fellowship. Pray that God would do mighty things in the lives of all who come.
Peace and Grace,
Elliot Ling
Last weekend hundreds of youth from urban, inner-city communities around Southern and Central California descended upon The Oaks Christian Camp and Conference Center. World Impact, an inner-city Christian church planting organization, hosted its annual Winter Teen retreat. Our youth ministry met at 8 am last Saturday to make the hour and a half drive to camp. It w
as the first time we have attended and boy was it a great time (even with the crazy wind and rain)!By and large the retreat was planned and organized by World Impact staff – everything from activities, to food, to accommodations, to the speaker. This enabled our youth ministry staff and me to focus our energies entirely on relational time with our youth. What a blessing! Whether it was time spent eating delicious dining hall food, enjoying daring activities like paintball and the high ropes course, or hanging out in our cabins l
ate at night, the adult staff were around our youth 24 hours a day for the entire weekend. It’s definitely a frenetic pace that can’t be sustained for very long, but for a weekend it felt like such a rich gift and opportunity to partner with God in loving our youth.With our abundance of relational time and the calm of being in a place far from the inner-city, God created space for the youth to share painful experiences where God has felt distant. One youth shared of his recent suicidal thoughts. Another shared the feeling of fear that overwhelmed him when his loving father was arrested by the police, seemingly out of the blue. Another shared of the hopelessness she felt at school, of being a good student and getting good grades. Several others resonated with these stories and shared similar stories of their own.
It became clear that
school and home, typically places of nurture, love and development, are instead places of darkness, pain and insecurity. In these places we challenged and encouraged our youth to know that God is present, as it says in the Psalm 139:11-12 “If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,’ even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for the darkness is as light with you.” Several prayed for faith to believe that God is present in their ups and downs. As we return to Los Angeles, I hope that we will continue walking with our youth and God through these difficult places.
Another highlight of the weekend is difficult to quantify so I’ll just describe it the best I can. Prior to the retreat, we were a youth group. We’d hit a good rhythm with our Wed night and Sunday morning gatherings. People knew each other, were friendly and generally enjoyed being together. After retreat it felt more like family. We’ve become a youth group family, brothers and sisters in Christ across race, gender and geography! We hung out together in the dining hall playing silly games enjoying each others’ presence. We sung loudly and proudly for our friend Ingrid who celebrated her birthday at camp. We saved seats for each other in the auditorium. We stuck together and played honestly as a team in the camp scavenger hunt. We shared our stories and testimonies while listening to others. God knit us together like a family.
I find the timing of all this to be a really exciting development. In February we’re planning our third annual “REEL Joy,” an arts-based, film-making, evangelistic outreach event that culminates with a screening of the youths’ films in early March. My hope and prayer is that many new youth in our neighborhood will come for the opportunity to act in and make a short film, and then stay in our youth group because they’ve been touched by the love of Christ. In the past REEL Joy has been a volatile mix of youth from different parts of the neighborhood who are taught to not get along. Please
pray for our youth and adult staff to demonstrate Christ in word and deed as we invite others to join our fellowship. Pray that God would do mighty things in the lives of all who come.Peace and Grace,
Elliot Ling
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Pray for Showers of Blessing!
I will send down showers in season; there will be showers of blessing.
Ezekiel 34:26
Ezekiel 34:26
The Adventures Ahead Tutoring Program started it's new semester on Tuesday. The good news is that we are once again at capacity, with 29 children enrolled. The bad news is that most of our families walk their children to and from the center, often pushing siblings in strollers. So you can imagine how torrential rain impacts attendance! Yesterday we had about 15 kids show up. If you are reading this early enough, pray for clear skies from 4-6pm today, and for God to give our kids a strong start regardless of the weather.
Some other good news is that students came back to a much improved learning environment. Lauren used her Christmas break to rearrange our classroom space and transform her own office into a computer lab with five workstations. The new floorplan gives each class a lot more space to work in, and a lot more distance from the next class over. At the end of a long school day it's not easy to concentrate on more academic work. A crowded room makes it even harder. Pray that our kids will work hard, stay focused and reap great rewards this spring!
One of our local partners donated some "new to us" computers that his company was replacing, and has offered to network them to a common printer. On the days we don't have enough reading buddies for each child, computers are a great way for kids to practice skills on their own. The new lab will help us make every minute count! Please pray that God will grant all of our equipment a long and useful life, and that the lab will indeed help our kids master skills they need.Lastly, we still have a staffing shortage to work out before next week. For now, Lauren is serving as a floating instructor during the hours that we're short on teachers. Pray for God's wisdom and provision as she works on closing these gaps over the weekend. Pray too for our volunteer recruitment, that God will bring us enough committed reading buddies to give each child the attention they need!
Friday, January 15, 2010
Winter Retreat
This weekend the Church of the Redeemer Youth Group will be heading off on a retreat. We'll be joining several other church groups and youth ministries at The Oaks Christian Conference center, a ministry of World Impact. 
After a wonderful fall of ministry, I'm excited and grateful for the time this weekend. The youth have worked hard to fundraise for the trip and we're ready to go! In the process of planning and preparing for this retreat I've been reminded of God's faithfulness and goodness in past youth retreats.
- This past October at our High School/Young Adults retreat, one our youth confessed for the first time the anger and pain he has felt as a result of his absentee father. He has begun to learn and grow in his understanding of God as his Heavenly Father.
- Last summer we challenged our youth to take risks of faith with Jesus. After struggling with homelessness in the last year, one young man returned home to find that his mother's work hours had been cut. With the family struggling to make rent he prayed for God's provision. The next day God provided a new housemate who was employed and able to contribute to rent and the young man's faith grew.
- In 2008 after experiencing the passing of a family member one of the youth encountered God in a new way. While worshipping at the retreat God gave him a comforting vision of him standing with Jesus and his family member. It proved to be a deeply healing time.
The youth group staff and myself are looking forward to being apart of God's work in our youth this weekend. The theme for the retreat comes from Psalm 139. We pray that God would work mightily through His Word, times of musical worship, fun activities and conversations to lead the youth into deeper relationship with Him.
We'd love to have your prayers for the weekend. As we've been praying, here are some things that God has put on our heart:
- New Decisions and Commitments: We hope for the youth to encounter God in a new way that leads to "decisions" - decisions to follow Jesus for the first time and decisions to trust even more deeply in Him
- Unity and Friendship: We pray that God will continue to grow the friendships between youth and adults in our group. It's our hope that the love of Christ will be evident in our youth group when we return to have our arts-outreach program "REEL Joy" in February.
- Spirit-led leaders: Please pray for our speaker Tommy Nixon and he shares the Word with the youth. Please also pray for our adult staff to pastor, play and pray with youth in a Spirit-filled way.
- Safe travels and Safety at camp
I look forward to posting an update next week!
Grace and Peace,
Elliot Ling
After a wonderful fall of ministry, I'm excited and grateful for the time this weekend. The youth have worked hard to fundraise for the trip and we're ready to go! In the process of planning and preparing for this retreat I've been reminded of God's faithfulness and goodness in past youth retreats.
- This past October at our High School/Young Adults retreat, one our youth confessed for the first time the anger and pain he has felt as a result of his absentee father. He has begun to learn and grow in his understanding of God as his Heavenly Father.
- Last summer we challenged our youth to take risks of faith with Jesus. After struggling with homelessness in the last year, one young man returned home to find that his mother's work hours had been cut. With the family struggling to make rent he prayed for God's provision. The next day God provided a new housemate who was employed and able to contribute to rent and the young man's faith grew.
- In 2008 after experiencing the passing of a family member one of the youth encountered God in a new way. While worshipping at the retreat God gave him a comforting vision of him standing with Jesus and his family member. It proved to be a deeply healing time.
The youth group staff and myself are looking forward to being apart of God's work in our youth this weekend. The theme for the retreat comes from Psalm 139. We pray that God would work mightily through His Word, times of musical worship, fun activities and conversations to lead the youth into deeper relationship with Him.
We'd love to have your prayers for the weekend. As we've been praying, here are some things that God has put on our heart:
- New Decisions and Commitments: We hope for the youth to encounter God in a new way that leads to "decisions" - decisions to follow Jesus for the first time and decisions to trust even more deeply in Him
- Unity and Friendship: We pray that God will continue to grow the friendships between youth and adults in our group. It's our hope that the love of Christ will be evident in our youth group when we return to have our arts-outreach program "REEL Joy" in February.
- Spirit-led leaders: Please pray for our speaker Tommy Nixon and he shares the Word with the youth. Please also pray for our adult staff to pastor, play and pray with youth in a Spirit-filled way.
- Safe travels and Safety at camp
I look forward to posting an update next week!
Grace and Peace,
Elliot Ling
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Lasting Gifts
Our tutoring director Lauren celebrated her birthday on Monday, and last night she joined our family for some late-night birthday cake. Following the rituals of candles, party hats and presents we turned our attention to the large stack of boxes on our living room floor. Lauren, Richard and I, and our housemate Heather each took a pair of scissors and started joyfully cutting through Amazon packing tape. We have had ONE HUNDRED books donated, as well as $250 in cash and gift cards. Praise God for the generosity of his people!
As we opened boxes last night we quickly fell to reminiscing about our own childhood and teen favorites. The ones we didn't think much of at first but later came to love, the ones that inspired us to collect the entire series, the tattered and yellowed ones we have passed down to our own kids, and the ones we miss because they are lost in our parents home somewhere. What a blessing our full bookshelves provided over the years!
Please pray for our Christmas Booksale on Saturday. Pray that all of our Adventures Ahead families will be able to come and that they will find just the right book for each of their children, from the babies on up to the teenagers. And pray that someday our students will sit in a living room with their own adult friends and reminisce fondly about some of these books you all have shared with them!
One of our partners shared a poem with us that captures the longterm blessing we hope these gifts will become. We hope you enjoy Diana's verse as much as we did!
As we opened boxes last night we quickly fell to reminiscing about our own childhood and teen favorites. The ones we didn't think much of at first but later came to love, the ones that inspired us to collect the entire series, the tattered and yellowed ones we have passed down to our own kids, and the ones we miss because they are lost in our parents home somewhere. What a blessing our full bookshelves provided over the years!
Please pray for our Christmas Booksale on Saturday. Pray that all of our Adventures Ahead families will be able to come and that they will find just the right book for each of their children, from the babies on up to the teenagers. And pray that someday our students will sit in a living room with their own adult friends and reminisce fondly about some of these books you all have shared with them!
One of our partners shared a poem with us that captures the longterm blessing we hope these gifts will become. We hope you enjoy Diana's verse as much as we did!
Lasting Gifts
(A Tribute to Robert Louis Stevenson and Hans Christian Andersen)
by Diana Axelson
For Christmas nineteen forty-two,
Gracie got a Toni doll
From Macy’s downtown flagship store,
For in those days there was no mall.
A Davy Crockett coonskin cap
Delighted Gracie’s brother Ed,
Although it soon spent far more time
Upon the floor than on his head.
Though Santa brought more games and toys,
He also brought some books,
But fairy tales and poetry
Got only cursory glancing looks.
Decades later, a different tale:
Ed and Gracie, old and frail,
Drank their tea and reminisced
About the gifts that now they missed.
“That ‘
“’The Little Match Girl’—how I cried,”
Said Gracie, and they both agreed
Of doll and cap they had no need;
What each now wanted for her-/himself
Was Stevenson, Andersen—on the shelf!
The faddish toys will soon grow old,
Become uncool and leave us cold.
No matter where or how you look,
The best gift always is a book.
So for holiday season zero nine,
May you get great books and nothing swine.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Adventures Ahead Christmas Bookstore
One of our goals at the Adventures Ahead tutoring program is help kids develop a life-long love of reading. Not just an ability to decode and comprehend, but a LOVE for reading itself. All kids are challenged by the mechanics of reading, skills that must be practiced and learned over time. But for our students, many of whom are learning English as a second language, these challenges often overshadow the fun and joy that a good story offers. This Christmas we want to help our kids' families to enjoy books together!
On December 19th our tutoring center will open for one day as a "Christmas Bookstore" where Adventures Ahead parents can purchase fun, engaging books to read with their kids. We will be selling donated new books at a very steep discount for parents to give their kids as gifts. We hope to collect at least 75 books at a variety of reading levels, including many titles in Spanish.
Would you like to participate? You can donate a book by having it shipped to the address below, or sending an Amazon gift card via email. We have published a wishlist that you can view online for ideas.
Please pray that God will provide a great selection of books, that our booksale will be a festive event, and that our kids will indeed grow to love reading.
If you would like to donate a book, please have it shipped to:
Adventures Ahead Christmas Bookstore
2706 Brighton Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90018
Or you can email a giftcard from Amazon.com and let us know what book you'd like us to order. Just make sure it gets to us by Tuesday, December 15th.
email address: anna@redeemercp.org
On December 19th our tutoring center will open for one day as a "Christmas Bookstore" where Adventures Ahead parents can purchase fun, engaging books to read with their kids. We will be selling donated new books at a very steep discount for parents to give their kids as gifts. We hope to collect at least 75 books at a variety of reading levels, including many titles in Spanish.
Would you like to participate? You can donate a book by having it shipped to the address below, or sending an Amazon gift card via email. We have published a wishlist that you can view online for ideas.
Please pray that God will provide a great selection of books, that our booksale will be a festive event, and that our kids will indeed grow to love reading.
If you would like to donate a book, please have it shipped to:
Adventures Ahead Christmas Bookstore
2706 Brighton Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90018
Or you can email a giftcard from Amazon.com and let us know what book you'd like us to order. Just make sure it gets to us by Tuesday, December 15th.
email address: anna@redeemercp.org
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