On Monday, after returning from the weekend in Mexico with Love God Love People, I woke up early to make it to Ancala golf course at 6 a.m.  The course was the location for the 1st Annual City Initiatives Golf Marathon with proceeds benefiting the Phoenix based City Initiatives program within Food for the Hungry.  I will be posting more on what/who City Initiatives is in the upcoming weeks, but it is worth noting that I am currently working with Pat McCalla, the director of City Initiatives, on a vision that would unite both City Initiatives and Love God Love People. To fully unfold this vision I’ll need more time, but essentially City Initiatives is in existence with a goal of uniting various sectors of Phoenix (Government, Educational Institutes, Youth, Churches and the Marketplace) with the vision of actually solving a problem. The first problem that this initiative has tackled has turned into a case study for what future initiatives will look like, that issue is underage sex trafficking in Phoenix. It is an unbelievably dark issue, and one that is not being allowed to stay out of site. City Initiatives and their many partnerships have instigated a movement against child sex slavery in Phoenix, “Branded”. This movement is named after a documentary which came out of this project and shares the same name.  I would encourage you to learn more by clicking here and visiting the Branded website.

The event was a great time of both celebration for what has already been achieved, and what still needs to be done. If you would like to contribute to the Branded cause or learn more click here.

Last weekend Love God Love People spent another month serving in Rocky Point, Mexico. With 4 vehicles filled with tools, food, and eager volunteers, we headed down Friday evening. Saturday morning we dispersed among several work sites. One was fixing up a house used my missionaries in Mexico. This included tasks like repairing a staircase and painting. On another site we were re-connected to an amazing family which we had worked with on a previous trip. The family had some counter tops and a sink donated but needed assistance putting it up. You can see pictures below of the team tackling the job as well as playing soccer with some of the kids. In the afternoon we packaged and distributed roughly 75 bags of food to families in the “invasion area,” A section which is home to several thousand people who live in most cases without running water, electricity or sewage. It’s always a bittersweet experience distributing the food and seeing the raw conditions that the people live in. But in doing so it also provides opportunities to continue establishing relationships and planting seeds for the Gospel when opportunity arises.

During the evening we joined the men and women at the Nueva Creacion Rehabilitation Center for a fiesta. We grilled up turkey dogs and served them with beans and chips. This is always a fun time to share with the body of of Christ and I love hearing stories from our volunteers that account the conversations they had and the people they met at the fiesta. After the long day we retreated back to the house and spent some time at the nearby beach with a campfire and some acoustic guitar (thanks to Jim). Jim also led worship Sunday morning at the Family of God church service, what a blessing. All in all it was a good weekend with great company. I’m looking forward to going back down in October (16th-18th). Below are some shots from the trip.

1 Peter 4:11

You may remember a post a few weeks back that I did for the marketing company Small Giants. I recently had the opportunity to work with them again. I went down to their office to spend the morning taking both candid and more traditional portraits of the team for use on their website. It was a lot of fun to see them on their “home turf.” They keep a great balance of both professionalism and a fun-loving persona. On top of that they  obviously know what they are doing (again just take a look at their site). I enjoyed getting to know more about their business and hope to get the opportunity to work with them more in the future! Danielle, Deirdre, Kimberly, and Elisabeth, it was a pleasure!

Below are a few shots from the morning.