April was a lot of fun but it went by really quickly. During the cold months, Greg and Eddie had been staying with a friend to get off the streets. As it was warming up, they were able to start coming back to family dinners because they were staying in the area again. When they came back, they started bringing along Kenny too. He quickly became part of the family.
For Easter, the three of them went to church with Katy and Jon. They spent the whole day with their extended family after that. Later in the month, they came to church with me and Jarred. This was the first time that we had brought anyone from the family to church (who wasn’t already part of a church) so it was monumental for us.
Greg and Eddie with Katy and Jon celebrating Easter.
In April, Robert had bugged Eric enough for free help with transitioning the church to huddles and MCs that he invited Robert to be a part of his huddle specifically for churches making the transition. We also put on the calendar for the following month a Discipleship and Mission workshop for our church, modeled after the one we had done the winter before.
One of the men from that huddle that Eric was leading, Roger had been in relationship with 3dm through Eric for a couple of years. Eric had him contact Robert and his huddle so that we could talk through our leadership pipeline which would help us focus our workshop. He was very helpful at getting us to ask the right questions.
Robert’s huddle was planning the workshop but we were using people in all three huddles that were now going on to run it. Since we had not taken/kept copious notes from the first workshop, it took a while for us to plod through all that we had learned in the past year plus to figure out what was necessary information to share. This was going to be a big deal because we were introducing huddles and MCs to the church for the first time.
Also at this time, Robert’s original coach was coming back to the States and he and his family were making their way across the US on their way to their new home in California. They stayed with Robert for a week as they passed through St. Louis.
On one of their first nights in town, Robert invited all the huddles over to his house to meet them and hang out with them. For most of the people that showed up, this was their first experience with being in relationship with people who spoke the language. As it had been for us at the pilgrimage and (for those of us that were there) at the Fry’s for the vows, they were excited to be able to relate to people they had just met on such a deep level.
Shaun and his wife also happened to be part of TOM. Since Jarred and I were very new to TOM and had very few connections to people in it, we were excited to spend time with them. We took them out to the City Museum and the out for dinner at Pi’s. It was great to get to know them. The consensus from the people that got to hang out with them was that it was like they were part of the family already.
As always, we would love to hear about what you are doing with missional communities in your context. Please feel free to share in a comment below. Also, if you have questions about anything we are doing, feel free to ask and we will get back to you as quickly as possible! Thanks for following along.
Love,
The Irby's
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