Open Units NOW!

Hello faithful blog readers! I want to bring this to your attention so that you can consider this or at very least spread the word. There are two units open and available ASAP here in the church. One is a two bedroom and the other a three. The units are going for $875 and $1,000 respectfully. Both units contain really incredible aspects of the church architecture including stained glass, wood floors and really nice updated appliances. Plus you'd be living next to us! His price has come down recently due to the inability to find good tenants. I know that each of my roommates would love to have kingdom minded people living among us. We have met a few of the other neighbors around us recently and we are getting so excited about this community.

Find a roommate or two and make it happen. If you are interested let one of us know!

Poetic City

[Tony]Its different for me here, living in the city. Instead of crickets and the wind outside of my window, I am learning to fall asleep to the constant drone of the interstate. The sounds here have become comforting. They are a constant reminder that this place is alive, that I am alive, and that humanity, in its endless string of tiny victories and errands run, is alive and always up to something.
My windows stay open in the fall-- the cold air helps me sleep. I like to wake up to the cold breath of the morning; the kind of air that snaps at your bare feet and makes you want to wear layers of clothes and drink thick hot coffee before a shower. I am still growing to accept the wake-up call of children being loud in the street, indulged in their playground games. I am still learning to not be alarmed at the sound of people talking outside of my window in the earliest hours of the morning. I am embracing the sound of pulsing car stereos as evidence that there is a culture here, and identity that is shared and that I will one day identify with.
I find that its harder to be romantic here in the city. By romantic, I am not referring to the Hollywood love stories of roses and chocolates, instead I am referring to the romantic that drives you to admire nature, to describe the normal in flowery and succulent language. Its harder to pretend to be an intellectual or to wear some scholarly or poetic façade when there is little to be defined by the abstract poetic imagination. Wordsworth would hate it here. Those poets of the sensitive heart, who bend words to bleed the sounds of their illusions would be lost. Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Shakespeare, Frost, Emerson, and Thoreau would find themselves alone in a place that had little use for their sonnets, symbolism, and pentameter. They couldn’t write about the way forests of fall red trees look like God’s blushing cheeks. They couldn’t personify some rare and beautiful flower or the color of the sunset or compare them to the colors of their lover’s eyes. They may decide their inspiration comes from the boarded windows of a lifeless foreclosed home, or maybe dedicate an ode to a stop light. But I feel their words would have still been too arrogant for this place.
Yet, there is a poetry here. It seems to walk to more deliberate beat of a bass line and drum tap instead of the melody of a mandolin. There is a mystery to be discovered here, but it may be less focused on the inward eye and more on turning outward to see your neighbor for the first time. In order to find the romance here, I am learning to see through a different lens. I must abandon my artist and poet eyes and exchange them with the eyes for a community. Its then that you see the smiles of mischievous children and fall in love with them. Its then that you catch the beauty of a simple greeting, hear angels singing from a corner church, and appreciate the sanctuary of a quiet prayer for a city.
I have seen joy here that I cannot quite comprehend and I have seen pain here at levels far beyond the words of books. I feel that I am severed from the quiet and stable world of Caribou Coffee and local newspapers. The people here don’t seem to need coffee. The idea of a lazy Sunday morning with a cup of joe, a newspaper, bacon and eggs and sleepy hellos does not fit completely. I watch as my neighbors seem to have mastered their chaos. It’s the chaos that seems to be the coffee, keeping everyone moving, engaged, excited and dramatic.
Love and hate here are raw and unwrapped. I hope to become as raw and unwrapped as that.

CAT update

[James] CAT woke me up this morning to kindly let me know that he needed out. I let him out to do his thing and decided to leave him roam for a while. I am sure he will find his way back here soon. He slept the whole night last night at the foot of my bed.

Neighbor mugged and moving to Prescott

[James] This morning as I was doing some laundry, I ran into our next door neighbor Matt. He and his family have been in the process of moving for about a week. I offered to help him with some things today if he needed it, which led to my first tour of his place. He, his wife and their 3 children have lived next door for a couple years at least but have now made the decision to move. A couple months ago Theresa was home during the day when she heard some people outside roughing around. It sounded serious enough that she felt that she should call the police. When the police asked where the disturbance was coming from, she decided to peak her head outside to see. When she went outside she discovered several youth to be the source of the commotion. One of them asked if she was calling the police, to which Theresa replied, yes they are on the phone right now. The girl rushed over to her and started taking swings. Theresa was able to dodge the throws of two girls and in fact ended up injuring one of them as she tried to defend herself. Within moments almost a dozen other youth from the area rushed out and were joining in. Theresa was actually forced to the ground as kids began kicking her head against the ground... She suffered a pretty severe concussion which made her sick for the next month. Theresa's father insisted that they move to a safer location. Even thought this was the first physical encounter that they had experienced, it was to be the last. Matt say's that they have enjoyed living here in this neighborhood and that they have felt relatively safe here for the most part, but once was too much.

Matt and Theresa have found a place in Prescott where they hope they will be able to raise their children in a safe and nurturing environment. I can't say that I blame them.

Each day it seems we learn something new about the neighborhood and the people. Today it got serious. We roommates can often have an ideal picture of what this is supposed to look like, but it is so important that we realize that we aren't there yet.

Hood Cat pleads for Sancturay.

[James] So, this evening we had some company over. And in the midst of the company Tony discovered a new friend out on our front porch. It was a small cat that seemed to be looking for some warmth and maybe a free meal. Well, it might not be a person, but we know that God cares for the smallest of the creatures right? So, "CAT" is living with us, at least for the night. We let him out and he followed me around for a little bit and then he wound up at our front door again.

So far he has enjoyed milk, water, oatmeal, a can of tuna and a few tostito chips. He is extremely inquisitive and he has found his way all around our house. CAT has made himself right at home, on our laps and on our couches. He seems perfectly content here. I'd like him to hang around, but I am not sure we boys are going to be responsible enough to do the cat food, litter box, and vet stuff. Maybe we will just let him in every once in a while. I mean after all, he might just be someone elses' lost pet.

We'll keep you posted on CAT's situation.

When it Rains it Pours

[Dan] First update from this roommate. Ekklesiah house's last one to be informed of the blog. Anyway, last night I was in prayer as my girlfriend Sarah and I had had a faith related fight, so I began to pray for myself and her to get understanding on each other's sides, praying that this would be resolved today. After truly opening myself I realized that I had others in my life that I hadn't closed issues with. I wrote a page long apology facebook message to a friend of mine from college that was scared about where my faith was headed at the end of college (it wasn't on the right track to say the least of things.) She wrote her message of concern almost a month ago and was wondering if I was getting back on track or not like I said I was going to. Well, time management never was a strength in mind and I told her what one of my elementary school teachers told me. "Better late than never, but better never late." I also was inclined to pray for a friend of mine in high school, so I contacted her and she let me know what was going on in her life.

Not the most exhilirating read I know, but I figured I would write something once to develop discipling to write in future.

Love, Love, Love.

Learning Community

[Tony] A few people have asked recently why there hasn’t been any posts lately. In response, first off, thank you to all of you who actually are taking time out of your busy lives to catch up on what may be going on in ours. Your thoughts and prayers are a blessing we could not go without. To put it simply, I respond by saying that we are still moving in. When I say this, I do mean it on a literal level, in that we are still trying to fill some large empty floor space with some furniture around the house and we haven’t even started the daunting task of trying to cover at least some of the miles of wall space we seem to have here with some art that speaks to who we are. However, in saying that we are still “moving in,” I also mean that we are still very much in the process of learning how to live with each other. The last month or so that we have been roommates together have been better than I ever could have imagined. Ryan, James, Dan and I seem to mesh seamlessly. I have found that now that I have had a month to live with them, I get anxious if I don’t see them for a couple of days. I would compare it to listening to or playing music (for you fellow musicians), in that after a few days without music, you start to crave it, you look forwards to when you will get to listen or play it again, it becomes a normal part of your life, leaving days without feeling kind of awkward in a way. The short times when we are all together have been rare and short lived lately, but we make the most of them when given the chance. In those times when we are all here, with nothing to do (at least for the moment), we are usually all in the same room. We are still getting to know each other. We are still learning each other’s likes and dislikes, each other’s quirks and habits, and each other’s gifts to the community God has blessed us with.
During times of prayer, God has told me that we need to spend a lot of time with each other right now. We need to take every opportunity we have and use them to grow and strengthen out relationships. The foundation of out community and its potential influence on our neighborhood will depend entirely on the strength of our relationships together. We must grow together as friends, as roommates, and most importantly, we must grow together in our faith. A community built on faith must grow together in that faith. Even though each one of us has our own unique story about our own walks with God, we now also share a new story which we will walk together. This story is just beginning. This is the story of a community, and just like we each have our own unique stories, this community will have its own story and its own walk with God. Right now, we are learning to walk again. We are building the strength of our faith legs by taking on aspects of our faith that we have not ventured into yet. We have only begun baby steps, learning slowly and patiently what it means and looks like to live in community. We are asking ourselves new questions; questions like, what does it mean to own in a community? Should all of our food be shared or should we just have certain community groceries like butter and condiments? These might seem like simple questions (which they are), but asking them now will lead us to all new answers. Just how attached are we to some of the things we think we “own.” What if someone breaks in and steals our things? Do we get better locks and an alarm system to simply make it harder for reality to find us? Or do we start here and now with letting go of our things to the point where our first instinct would be to love a person who would steal our things?
The phrase “honeymoon period” has been used a couple of times to label what stage we are at right now. God is not asking us to do any monumental acts of community engagement. He is simply asking us to learn how to be a community with each other. Our near-sighted goal right now is to learn our own discipline. We are mapping out each other’s schedules to determine the opportune times to become disciplined in our times of prayer, worship, discussion, and interaction with each other. God has made it very well known to us that our living here and with each other is His doing. God has shown us that this house is a gift with a purpose. We were given this place because God chose us to pursue the purpose He has with it. Knowing this, we also know that God will show us how and when we are ready to be a community outside of our own walls. We rely completely on God’s direction here. We rely on your prayers and we rely on the love that we have for each other and the love that we share for God.
Our posts will continue to come. Just know that for a while they may share a common theme of our learning logistics. If you have any ideas or advice for us about our mission here or about community living, or simply want to be involved in the little things that are happening now (and the bigger things down the road), don’t be afraid to email us at ekklesiahhouse@gmail.com. Keep us in your prayers!