Gearing Up for Another Great Summer in Cleveland!

While it may only be the beginning of March, we are already in full swing summer mission team planning mode up here in Cleveland.

The summertime is one of our favorite times of the year! Half of that is because it is actually above freezing hahaha! But really the summertime is actually our favorite because of all the outreach we cram in to two months! We love getting the opportunity to serve those in our community and through that service getting to have countless conversations about the gospel!

Some of you reading this have been on or are gearing up for a mission trip to Cleveland, others might be Cleveland natives, and still others of you are just nice enough to read my blog haha! Whatever category you fall into, check out the list below, hopefully it will be helpful, and feel free to comment with even more mission trip tips!

Tips for a great mission trip to Cleveland:

1) Be open to your new context.

A true Clevelander LOVES Cleveland. There was a recent article floating around saying Cleveland is the one place you look like a tourist if you’re NOT wearing a Cleveland T-Shirt. Most of the rest of the country hates on Cleveland, whether they call it the “Mistake on the Lake “or hate on Lebron and his skills. So Clevelanders show their city extra love. The city is our own secret treasure.

That being said. be open to fall in love with our city and the people in it too. Cleveland will for sure be different than your town and your context but embrace the differences. Don’t knock that the houses are so close together, embrace that everything is only 10-15 minutes away from your door step! Don’t hate on how bad the browns are, embrace the fact that you can start a conversation with just about anyone in the city with “How about them Browns”. They are always a great conversation piece!

2) Be people focused.

Don’t be afraid of people that look, speak, & potentially smell different than you do. Large cities like Cleveland attract people of all kinds of different cultures, backgrounds, & home lives. Remember that God created them and loves them dearly and so should you. Don’t be shocked when a non-Christian acts just like that, a non-Christian. When someone’s heart has not been changed by Christ, they have no reason to act differently from the world. Keep listening and loving them as Christ would. People can tell if you care about them or not. Ask them about themselves-“How long have you lived in Cleveland” etc – don’t run immediately to the question “If you died tonight where you would you go?” people will see you have an agenda and not give you the time of day.

3) Be ready to share the gospel.

A lot of our teams are from the south and that southern accent sticks out quickly. Use that to your advantage! When someone asks where are you from and why are you in Cleveland, respond letting them know you’re here on a volunteer trip serving because Christ has served you. See where that conversation leads.

Being ready to share the gospel might mean preparing your own testimony of how God opened your eyes to your need for Him, preparing a few scriptures ahead of time to share, or having a short explanation of the gospel ready. That explanation might look like: 1) Who we are (sinners separated from a Holy God) 2) Who Jesus is (God’s Son), 3) what Jesus has done for us (lived a perfect life unlike us, died on the cross bearing our sin and shame, and rising again conquering sin and death), and 4) What their response should be (Turning from sin & reliance on self and turning to faith in the work of Christ) 

4) Don’t wait till you’re on the mission trip to share the gospel.

I’ll be honest, if you’re not intentionally looking for ways to share the gospel now…..the chances of you sharing it once you go on your mission trip are slim. We, yes myself included, run to find any excuse not to share the gospel (even on a mission trip). We think-“It will make things weird” “They might not like me anymore and avoid me” “What if they ask a question I don’t know the answer to”. The Lord will equip you for the task, I promise! As Nike says Just Do It!

5) Don’t stop sharing the gospel once you go back home from the mission trip. 

One of the great bonuses of going on a mission trip in the states is that many of the things you do in Cleveland, you can do right at home like getting involved in a community garden, throwing block parties, getting involved in your community etc. Look for ways to be intentional in your own community.

6) Be flexible.

It will rain when you need it be sunny. Not as many people will show up to events as you expected. People you talk to may be rude. Things simply will not go the way WE think they should go, but that doesn’t mean God is not still at work. So keep your chin up, roll with the flow, and trust in the Lord’s plans.

As we were painting a home last year, one of the neighbors would say we could use his driveway for ladders & scaffolding, but every time they would set the items up, the neighbor would come out of his home yelling to get off his property. This stopped this house from being finished in one week. So what did we do? We prayed. The next week, the neighbor kept his cool, the house was completed, and we actually met several more neighbors because of the ruckus he made. God’s plans were not thwarted.

7) Encourage the pastors & planters you are serving with.

Cleveland is a super lost city, and it is hard work the pastors & planters do here week in and week out often with little visible fruit from their sacrificial labor. The pastors & planters have also been in the context longer than you. So trust in the plans they have for you to reach out to the community over the week you are here. Don’t run to instruct them of how you would do it, instead run to encourage them. Feel free to offer up suggestions as we need each other to help us think outside the box & no pastor or planter is perfect but do so after running to encouragement first.

We have actually had an anonymous person from a mission team use our offering box as a suggestion box for how they thought our Sunday service went or should I say how they thought it should have gone……yeah…..don’t do that, just talk to them face to face.

The last thing I’ll say is that mission teams & your service really do work. We have seen people come to Christ and get involved in the church after each and every summer. It makes the long hot busy days of summer 100% worth it.

So bring it on summer of 2017! We can’t wait to see all that you hold in store!

Let Them Eat Cake!

We had a lot of fun celebrating Tony’s 29^th birthday this last weekend! His last year in his 20’s! We got together with his family at Heck’s, a Cleveland burger place that has been open since 1974, and then came back to our place for cake!

 Tony always requests a Banana Nut Cream Cheese Cake for his birthday. It’s pretty much banana nut bread turned into a cake with cream cheese frosting. It’s delicious, even if I do say so myself. It’s a bit of work as it’s a 3 layered cake, but I can’t deny the birthday boy his favorite cake right?!

Several of you requested the recipe so check it out below. This cake is one of my mom’s specialties! She also puts a thin layer of sliced bananas between each layer of the cake. I love the pecans and like to put a layer of those with the frosting between each layer. So whatever hits your fancy-go for it! And let me know how it turns out!

Banana Nut Cream Cheese Cake

Cake Ingredients:

3 cups flour (plus more for sprinkling on pans)

2 cups sugar

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp ground cinnamon

½ tsp salt

3 eggs beaten

¾ cup vegetable oil

3-4 large ripe bananas, mashed

1 cup chopped pecans

1½ tsp vanilla extract

Frosting Ingredients: (I double this frosting recipe when I make it so I won’t run out)

1 8oz pkg cream cheese (room temp)

½ cup butter (1 stick) (room temp)

1 pound powdered sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

Prep Directions:

1) Grease & flour 3 (9 inch) cake pans

2) Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit

Cake Directions:

1) Stir flour, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon, & salt together in a large mixing bowl

2) Add beaten eggs & oil and stir just until dry ingredients moisten (Don’t beat)

3) Stir in mashed bananas, pecans, & vanilla

4) Divide the batter among the 3 pans

5) Bake for 23-28 minutes (or until inserted toothpick comes out clean)

6) Cool the cake layers in pans for 10 minutes

7) Then turn them out onto a cooling rack to completely cool before frosting

Frosting Directions:

1) Blend cream cheese & butter together in a bowl

2) Gradually add powdered sugar & beat until fluffy

3) Beat in Vanilla

4) Fill and frost the completely cooled cakes

Celebrate Good Times C'mon

Happy New Year Everyone! Can you believe it’s 2017 already? Crazy how time flies! I’ve let 4 months go by since my last update and so much has happened in just 4 months time!

We had a great end of 2016! Tony and I celebrated our 5 year wedding anniversary together in Niagara Falls. Crazy that 5 years could come and go so quickly! And yet I struggle (in a good way) to remember what life was like before we were together. In 5 years time, we have laughed a lot, grown a lot, accomplished a lot, & forgiven a lot. We have a couple in our church that has been married for 56 years, and they say the secret is they are big forgivers. And I say…true that! We are wonderfully “stuck” with each other through the good times & bad. 

We spent Thanksgiving in Alabama with my family. We had a great time catching up with them, eating way too much food, going fishing, and enjoying temps in the 70’s!

 

It was fun and a wee bit hectic having both Christmas and New Years Day fall on Sundays this last year.  In some ways it was really nice gathering together as believers to celebrate the gift of Christ on Christmas Day and starting the New Year off together at church! But if it was like that every year, I’m afraid I would need more than 6 days in between the two celebrations hahaha!

My parents came up to Cleveland for Christmas this last year and we had a great time celebrating as both Loseto’s & Cooper’s!

Speaking of celebrating, we just celebrated our 2 year anniversary as Gateway Church Old Brooklyn this past Sunday! How exciting! Once again, I sit back and wonder how could 2 years possibly go by that fast, but at the same time, I have a hard time remembering what life looked like before church planting. Before the getting up early each Sunday to set up sound equipment, fold bulletins, and brew coffee. Before cramming as many people in our home as possible for Bible study (For the record, you can fit way more people than 3 on a couch and a pillow on the floor totally counts as a seat). I think one of the hardest things to get used to was no matter how well or poorly you felt like service went on Sunday, you only have 6 days until you need to do it again haha! Let me tell you, that’s a quick deadline week in and week out!

But we couldn’t be more thankful for Gateway Church Old Brooklyn! We have seen people come to put their faith in Christ, be discipled, and make disciples. It’s been an awesome two years, and I can’t wait to see what the Lord has in store for the future!

Spring & Summer 2016 Update

Man oh man it’s been almost 9 months since I’ve updated this blog….can I get a YIKES!?!

Well to catch you up, a few snapshots of awesomeness that has happened since my last update:

Gateway Church Old Brooklyn had it’s One Year Anniversary in January….YAY! That might not sound like a big deal, but when you begin anything especially a church plant you are not guaranteed to make it even to your one year anniversary. So we’re  super excited to have met that milestone and to be continuing the church planting work in this second year.

In May, we also got to see 3 of my favorite people baptized….ok so everyone that goes to Gateway Church Old Brooklyn is my favorite….it’s true…but these 3 are pretty special! Chris, on the right, is the guy that’s always there early, stays late, and happily volunteers for any work that needs to be done no matter the task. Curtis and Jessica, on the left, were one of the first families to come from a summer camp, check out the church, and stay. That’s quite a commitment as we’re a new church plant with limited programs for kids! They all faithfully serve and encourage our church body on a weekly basis & it was such a blessing to see them follow in believer’s baptism!

This summer the Lord allowed us to pull off a total of 4 kid’s camps, 2 block parties and 13 housing repair projects this summer!

The kids’ camps were a blast! We had a football/volleyball camp, Frisbee camp, soccer camp, & arts & crafts camp. Each day we would have a snack break & use that time to share the gospel with the kids. You would really see these kids start to grasp what Jesus had done for them & several were hearing this good news for the very first time.

The construction projects went fabulously this summer. They are always a little nerve racking as to whether or not we’ll actually get everything done, but praise the Lord for the 3^rd year in a row, all the projects were completed from painting 6 homes & 1 garage, demoing 5 garages, and rebuilding 1 porch….it all got done. There were definitely bumps along the way but we got through it all. We had one incident where we needed to use a neighbor’s driveway to paint the side of one of the homes. The neighbor would say we could use his driveway but as soon as the group would set up ladders, he would come out yelling at them to get off his property. We prayed and prayed for this man and this situation as we couldn’t finish the project in those conditions. And wouldn’t you know, the Lord did a mighty work and the man all of the sudden became calm and peaceable the 2^nd week of work. Also the neighbor on the other side of the house came out due to the previous ruckus and was very interested in the church. You never know what the Lord is up to even when things don’t go according to “our” plan.

2016 has been a fun & interesting year so far, and we are excited to see all the Lord has in store for the fall! Check out Gateway’s Summer Outreach Video at the link below if you haven’t already! It brings a smile to my face each time I watch at as I see all the Lord did this summer in our community!

http://gatewaychurcholdbrooklyn.com/summer-2016-outreach-video/

Thanks for reading and have a great day! 

Merry Christmas Y'all....'Bout Time for an Update!

Merry Christmas Y’all! Where is the time going? And where do I start this blog LOL!?! So much great stuff has happened and is still happening since my last blog! So strap in, hold on tight, and I’ll do my best to make this action packed blog as short and sweet as possible!

This summer was AWESOME! We had 4 great weeks of mission teams that achieved so much in such a small amount of time!

Lewisport Baptist Church from Kentucky did a fantastic job helping us at our local Community Garden, promoting our kids camps, and hosting a game day at our local Rec Center-Estabrook!

Mt Airy Baptist Church from South Carolina sent us a group of 60 youth….yes that number is correct-60….that made a huge impact on the community. The whole neighborhood was talking about the sea of purple shirted students that were helping them with landscaping, loving on their kiddos at soccer camp, and serving the community with a free Block Party!

Our World Changers P2 Teams, did a phenomenal job completing 12 major housing projects! Not only did they do great work, but they also held daily Bible Studies at each of the homes which many of the home owners participated in.

Our final team, View Acres Baptist Church, helped us finish the summer strong as we were able to participate in food pantry delivery, sponsor a Frisbee Camp, and host a second Block Party!

Jumping to the fall, we had our 2^nd annual Fall Festival and our very first Baptism Service! With help from a mission team from Mt. Airy, we were able to reach out to just under 400 people at our Fall Festival! What a blast! Then that Sunday we had our first baptism service! We had the blessing of baptizing Dwana who had recently made Jesus Lord of her life! Our friends Hector and Denisse with Connect Church also baptized Edwardo that had also recently come to faith in Christ through their Bible Study Group.

I’ll be honest and the first to say, we don’t always get to see the fruit of the labor that goes in to all the ministry we put out. Cleveland is a hard context to share the gospel in and has lots of “hard soil”, but every once in a while the Lord does give us glimpses of the fruit our labor is producing just like these baptisms.

A few other glimpses include:

-Dereonte. After attending our first block party of the summer, a teenager named Dereonte walked almost 3 miles on his own in the heat of July just so he could attend Gateway Church Old Brooklyn. He is now off at college, but he had the opportunity to hear the good news of Christ before heading on to this new season of life.

-Bobby Lee. An elderly war veteran named Bobby Lee was one of the homeowners who we helped landscape and repaint his home over the summer. The teams that helped Bobby Lee didn’t stop at painting his home, but they also shared the gospel with him. He says he now has New Life and has started regularly attending Gateway Church Old Brooklyn!

-Several Families have also gotten involved with Gateway Church Old Brooklyn after their children’s involvement in our summer sports camps.

Exciting stuff is happening! Whether you came to Cleveland and made these events happen or are one of our faithful prayer partners, THANK YOU! We are limited with what we can do without your partnership through physical participation, financial provision, and prayer! Thanks for reading the blog! Always feel free to keep up to date on Gateway Church Old Brooklyn’s Facebook Page or our website www.gatewaychurcholdbrooklyn.com.

Summer Project Make Overs 2015

As always let me start my blog off with an apology that it’s been SO long since I’ve updated it! But I promise it’s only because we’ve been SO busy doing such great stuff!

During our 4 weeks of mission teams this summer, we had two weeks of construction teams through the World Changers P2 program. These teams were made up of youth that came from all over the United States to help us complete 10 housing projects….yes 10 projects!

These youth not only sacrificed a week of their summer but also paid money just so they could come to Cleveland, participate in these housing projects, and share the good news of the gospel! It doesn’t get much cooler than that! Each day the teams would do a Bible study at their work site and often times the homeowners would participate as well. These youth left a great lasting impression in the Cleveland neighborhood of Old Brooklyn.

Ok enough yapping from me:) Check out some of the highlights below!

 

Thanks to all the volunteers that made these projects a reality as well as a huge shout out to the Old Brooklyn Community Development Corporation that partnered with us in finding not only the homes but also the necessary funding! What a great summer!

Some Visiting of Our Own!

Hi Friends! I hope your summer is starting off well with some time in the sun, some BBQ on the grill, and a nice glass of sweet tea!

Tony and I figured we had had so many visitors come our way lately, it was time to do some visiting of our own! So we headed down to Louisville KY and reunited with a lot of great friends! Tony and I had the opportunity to share with our old church, Crossing, about all the Lord has done and is doing in Cleveland. We also had the opportunity to help raise support for our friends Colin and Marianne as they prepare to move to Cleveland and help us in our church planting efforts! What a great time! It was a blast being there and catching up with old friends!

 

















When we returned to Cleveland, life quickly became overwhelming between our Wednesday night community group needing a new location, major construction beginning on the road our Church meets on, and our church computer crashing. Welcome home right;) But we’re still trucking along and leaning in to Jesus more and more with each day!

Michael and Aubrey Meadows, our North American Mission Board Interns, are officially in Cleveland! They’ve been here less than a week and have already been a tremendous help and encouragement! We couldn’t be more thankful that the Lord is allowing us both to play a part in each other’s church planting journeys-what a blessing!

We are anxiously, excitedly, and expectantly gearing up for a summer full of mission teams! We receive our first team this coming Sunday. Can’t wait to see how the Lord will use this team of 12 people from Lewisport, KY to further the kingdom in Cleveland!

Please keep us in your prayers sweet friends! Continue to pray for the Lord to bring us a music minister. We know he’ll bring us the perfect person in his perfect timing. Please pray for all our summer activities and mission teams. Pray that these activities would result in people coming to know Jesus as their Savior and joining the local church body of Gateway Church Old Brooklyn.

Now time to get back out in the sun and soak up some rays in the garden! Thanks for reading!