Monday, September 29, 2014

  We have been living in Chicago for 2 years and 1 month. We have loved living in this amazing city, but it would be a lie if we pretended that it has been easy. We have moved several times in our lives to new cities, but moving to Chicago to start a church has brought about a spiritual warfare that we have never experienced in our life. It is a lot of pressure when each day you leave your house trying to meet people that you can share your faith with and invite them to said church you are planting, but you find out that getting to know people in this city is extremely hard and even if you do get to know them well enough to invite them to church it turns awkward. You encounter rude people daily and people that just annoy you so much that you have days that you truly say in your heart, "Who cares? Let them live there life the way they want to!" Okay, maybe that's a little harsh, but some days I long for that already established church with people who are already committed to attending, love Jesus, have kids the same age as my kids, and people we can develop lasting relationships. Some days I just want to go about our family's business and enjoy living in Chicago and forget about the people in our neighborhood.

    But then one day your son has a birthday party and you capture this picture.

I see these kids on my porch and my heart breaks for these sweet children. These are Samuel's friends from his class. These kids represent five different countries. As I have gotten to know these kids the last few years I know that none of them have a church background. Several of them actually practice false religions. It is in this moment that I know why we live in this city. These kids and their families need Jesus. These kids and hundreds more like them that live on our street and in our neighborhood need Jesus. 

  Samuel had a great birthday week :). His party on Saturday was a success. Samuel loves Subway so I surprised him with a sub that was 3 feet long! He also got an extra large cake on accident. I used the bakery at a local grocery store back in July for Chloe's birthday and had a terrible customer service experience. They spelled Chloe's name wrong and then refused to change it. It got a little heated before I had to get a manager involved to get it fixed. The cake, though, was so good that I thought I would give them a chance to redeem themselves. Samuel wanted a Pokemon cake but the store did not have that character cake. The lady was so helpful and said that they used to do that cake so they could do the colors and I could add my own characters. I thought that was a great idea. I go to pick up the cake on Saturday and they hand me this huge sheet cake. They accidentally made a larger cake and they left Samuel's name off all together. They had to let me have the bigger size, but Jeremy cut the cake and gave each kid a HUGE piece of cake. I am sure their parents would have been thrilled to see how much sugar they had at our house. The kids had so much fun none of them wanted to leave when the party was over. The downside of them living in the neighborhood is that they were all like "I can call my mom. She will let me stay longer. I just live up the street." There were two boys that live a few streets over and I took them home around 6;30 because one of the boys needed to get home. Two of the kids said they would just wait until we got back. Sure enough we took the boys home and when we got back two of the kids were just sitting on our front porch waiting :). Around 7;30 I finally told the kids that I needed to take them home but they could come over another day. All the activities of the week wore me out and I needed to get the house back together for Sunday church at our house. Here are a few pictures from Samuel's party.