June 2004

Dear Friends and Family,

Thought I’d take a few minutes to let you know what is going on here with the family and the ministry. We are in the midst of one of our busiest summers ever. I don’t know how many times I have said I would never do back to back youth work groups and this summer we scheduled three in a row. They are wonderful to work with, but it does get draining. Our schedule each day is Coz beginning at 7:30 am and working with the group on manual labor projects till noon. At 1pm Joyce takes over with the day camps (VBS) whilst Coz has Emma, then we switch again at 5pm. Depending on the day and the group, Coz finishes between 7pm and 11pm.

So far we have had groups from Central Wesleyan Church in Holland, Michigan, the Chinese Church of Maryland, First Baptist Church of Newtown, PA and Grantham Brethren in Christ, PA. We have run 5 day camps with over 200 kids, built walls, painted anything standing still, cleaned vacant lots, taken part in open air evangelism and worked at a Mosque. This final piece (the Mosque) is part of our outreach into the Muslim community around Feltonville, our new ministry site. Our ministry transition has been smooth. As I write this we are finishing our last week at Bethel and will be commissioned by Bethel this Sunday evening. We have already started at the new ministry, Wyoming Ave Baptist Church (WABC) and so trying to work at two places at once has kept us all on a hectic pace. Most Sundays we end up at both churches and the girls have been quite confused.

On the financial front, Bethel has graciously agreed to handle all our incoming support until the end of the year, so those who send support please keep sending it as before. These past two weeks we received over $7000 from three supporters to go towards our legal fees for Saiyeh’s adoption. This should cover all the fees. The paper work has already begun, and a change in the law should mean things will move quickly. As many of you know it has been six years in the process. This brings us to our sad news. We have decided to postpone our trip to Australia for the time being. With our support down we felt it was our number one priority to have the adoption handled. We will be putting any extra monies aside for the trip and will go as soon as we have enough money ($12,000).

Our roles in the new ministry are beginning to be defined. I (Coz) have realized that before I can begin working towards my goal of developing young leadership I must first begin developing the older leadership. Working with the over 60 crowd has been a new thing for me and I am so out of my comfort zone. Rev. Fred Estrada, Bethel’s new senior pastor has been invaluable in his advice and mentoring. Each week he teaches me a new lesson on how to minister to the people at WABC. At the same time as working with the existing members we are seeing new people arriving. From 40 people at church on a Sunday when we began we are now seeing twice that number, including a Father’s day high of over 100. That day was very special to me because of the people who came out. Let me tell you one of the stories.
About two months ago I ran into a guy I knew, Luis. It was really late at night, and he was high on a mixture of drugs. As I stopped him to talk it took a moment for him to remember me.

I knew I wouldn’t get through to him then, so I asked for his number. After about 6 tries I finally thought I had the right number and off I went. The next day I did the first thing I usually do in these situations, pray. Then I went to step two, call Pastor Lou. More and more in our new work I find myself in situations so far out of my league these are my two steps. Pastor Lou spent 2 or 3 weeks trying to track Luis down (the number wasn’t right). Finally one Sunday morning Luis comes into church. He sat when we stood, and stood when we sat. He was coming off a high, but he was there. Just the week before, I had preached for the first time at WABC and had spoken on loving the unlovely, those who may come in high, drunk, smelly etc. Well, he was loved. A few weeks later he brought his girlfriend, Nelly. A couple of weeks after that she told me she was frustrated with the church. You see we only had 3 things a week she could come to, and she wanted something every day. Then on Father’s day I witnessed one of those moments. I don’t think I can describe the feelings, so let me just tell you the facts. Luis came into church and I told him that someone he knew was already here, Eddie. Eddie had just been released from prison, and Joyce had called and asked him to bring his son to church for Father’s day. Eddie came, along with his whole extended family (10 or so). Luis came into church and gave Eddie this big hug. What is so special about that, you wonder? Well some years back Eddie had robbed Luis’s drug gang at gun point. Luis’s gang had put out a contract on Eddie’s life which they later lifted after I met with the gang leader. To see two former enemies hugging in church, well, that is a moment. Eddie is back getting high, but Luis and Nelly are faithfully coming out to church and attending a weekly Bible study, along with 5 others who are all leaving either a drug or gang situation. Please be praying for them and the thousands of others in our new community. After 3 weeks of work we saw our first Vietnamese family come out to day camp and VBS. We have begun working more with some Muslim families and Joyce attended a dinner on Sunday with two families. A recent full page article in the Philadelphia Inquirer about the ministry to the Muslims resulted in a few tense weeks. The heading “He tries to convert Muslims” in reference to Pastor Lou, wasn’t the publicity we were looking for, but things have settled down. We are in the process of looking at some ideas to set up a safe house to move any Muslims who convert to Christianity. We will keep you posted on that.

We would like to send out a special thanks to the Overbeek family this month. We often have people come in to look at the ministry and to do short term projects. We don’t often have people come here on their family holidays (vacation). “Let’s see kids, should we go to Disney, the Grand Canyon, or North Philly?” The Overbeeks decided to take some of their vacation in North Philly. Jerry had been a couple of times to help out with building projects and wanted his family to see why he took days off work and drove 12 hours to serve. It was such a joy and encouragement to have them here. (I should mention that the Peerbolts and Meezaks have also vacationed here in years past, both also from Michigan).

Till next time, thank you all so much for everything you do. If you would like to begin financially supporting us, please use the enclosed envelope. We are still about $800 per month shy of our goal.

In Him,
Joyce, Coz, Saiyeh, Melanie, Emma and Samson