Busy, busy, busy

I haven't blogged for such a long time.  So much going on.  In fact, we had some confusion and I'm doing this in Fran's office 'cause I had to drop off Ross for choir.  Blogging needs to be regular and I have a meeting later and so here I am in her office. 

The community garden organizing meeting is this weekend and I'm working to get that together.  I have a grant to write and contacts to make.  I was worried, but God provided a master gardener from right in the neighborhood.  Props to LaRena who is excited and ready to get to work.

Met up with Ryan today and we discussed community development in Keller Park.  Ryan is really wanting to work on that since the CCDA conference.  We talked about some good plans to culminate in a spring clean-up and concert.  What's even better is that he doesn't want to tie it to the church so we open it up to a lot more people that way.  Then we went and looked at some locations that would be possible neighborhood gathering places.  Like me, Ryan would like to come up with some sort of coffee house/drop in center in the community.  A lot of work to be done.

I'm still working with the Housing Authority to put a program in place.  Just got an email from those folks and it's being put off until the first part of December.  The longer this thing stretches out the lower my motivation is.  The hurdles make me wonder if this isn't God's will that I'm active at LaSalle Landing.  Gene and I talked about this motivation level today.

TAP is a community organizing group in South Bend affiliated Gamaliel and I'm doing stuff with them now.  I'm meeting a lot of other pastors and it seems like something that is a positive step for my ministry.  I'm also going to start volunteering at Stone Soup at the end of the month.  Stone Soup provides assistance with utilities and rent as well as budget guidance.

As I think about what I am doing and my ministry it occurs to me that there are two levels to the work.  The system is broken and on one level my work touches individuals.  LaSalle Landing, the community garden and Stone Soup speak to that level and provide that help.  The other initiatives like TAP seek to address the larger, systemic issues.  I had never really considered this two-fold approach, but that concept makes sense to me.  What it also does is keep my busy, busy, busy.

Not an exciting blog, but I had to get something out there.  I'll post more next week about the garden.