Following our time in Simi Valley with New Heart Church, we headed south of Los Angeles and through the fun of LA traffic to one of the kids favorite overnight camping spots:  Oceanside, CA.  Specifically, they love Oceanside Harbor.  It is a parking lot with no RV hookups and the spaces are super tight together, but it excels in the areas that are critical to the kids:  playgrounds and wildlife!  They have a great little play area right on the sandy beach, its only about 100 yds to the waves, and there are almost always a few sealions swimming around in the harbor to watch.  We’ve been there about 4 or 5 times and every time there is a sea lion on the docks.

Just down the road from Oceanside is the city of Vista, CA.  One of the last times we were in Oceanside, our local friends mentioned a recovery ministry named Green Oak Ranch in Vista, so we decided this time to contact them.  They agreed to let us visit and just hang out as guest to see what they were doing, so we headed to Green Oak for 3 days before attending a weekend service at Vista Assembly, where we had visited during Easter of 2009. (Remember the Tim LaHaye assignment?)

Green Oak was amazing.  They have on site facilities for their resident recovery program including a full cafeteria, dorms, a chapel, and classrooms.  They also have a over 100 acres of land that they also use for a retreat center, inclusive of a nature center, animal reserve with Llamas, goats, ducks, emu, a couple horses, a pair of donkeys, a bobcat, a longhorn, and a few owls.  They have a full reptile center, a pool, and retreat cabins.  Its quite a place.  Most importantly, you can sense the presence of God in those who spend their days there.  It is a place where lives are transforming and hope is being found.  It is awesome, and we are blessed to have experienced it.

Mother’s Day weekend brought us an opportunity to share with the folks from New Heart Foursquare Church in Simi Valley (the sermon was Episode 1 of the new Share Well Podcast if you missed it!), but the preceding two weeks allowed us a little time to both relax, regroup, adjust to being a family of five in the RV, and possibly the most fun you can have with a sledgehammer, DO SOME DEMOLITION!!!

New Heart is in the middle of a sanctuary remodel, and they still had some wrap up demolition to do, so we all put on the work gloves and did everything from tearing out a wall to pulling staples from the stage where carpet had been removed.  We were also allowed to throw out a few ideas for how the interior could possibly look and talk with those doing the design work to give them some new concepts to play with.

Pastor Paul Kuzma has been a great support and friend since we met a little over a year ago, and both he and his congregation continue to blow us away with their generosity. He even ran a 100′ cable over his fence from his house for us to have cable TV!  Their staff and members are a blessing, and we’ll look forward to returning and seeing the finished project in the future!

View photos from Easter to Catalyst West at our Flickr Photostream

Grace Harvest Church – Moorepark, CA

Our first time to stop at Moorepark, Grace Harvest was hosting Pastor Emmanuel Sackey, our partner and Pastor from Somanya, Ghana, Africa.  We haven’t seen Pastor Sackey in over a year, so it was great to reconnect and have time to refresh vision with him!  Watch for some exciting things coming soon connected to Pastor Sackey, Share5, and Revival Harvest Ministries.

Catalyst West Coast II – Irvine, CA

Back for it’s second year at Mariner’s Church in Irvine, CA, the crew of Catalyst West put on another great conference.  Amy spent a good portion of her time with the Land Of a Thousand Hills Coffee crew, and I volunteered with the Catalyst team in the resource store.  The kids?  Well, they were doing one of their favorite things… encouraging people to Drink Coffee Do Good.

Emily and Dillon rocking with Land of a Thousand Hills Coffee from Share5 by WorldWins on Vimeo.

Sunday, December 7th we were given the opportunity to present the Share5 challenges at the beginning of the service at GenerationsChurch.tv, Pastor Troy Shedeed's church in Moreno Valley, CA.

We arrived and parked the RV outside of the Regency Theatre in Moreno Valley and were impressed at how they used an outdoor greeter's table and huge banners to transform the entry of the theatre into the entry to the church. The lobby had more tables, children's ministry registration, and great signage that made it easy to find out where you were going or needed to take your kids.

Chad was introduced by Pastor Troy and shared the main idea behind Share5, that of creating a heart environment that allows a person to believe they can have an impact on the people and community around them. He tied the message into the Christmas theme by asking the question "How will YOU visit (celebrate, bring Christ with you) others this Christmas season?" based on James 1:27's "Pure religion is this: that you visit widows and orphans in their trouble."

Remember that to visit in Christ's time was not a light matter. Trips were made on foot, required effort, time, and sacrifice, and the visitor would often end up staying for days on end, literally entering into the situations, challenges, and issues of those whom they were "visiting". To visit for the Christian should literally mean to be the transporting vessel through which Christ can have access to the situation within which people find themselves.

Who will you visit this Christmas, and how can you leave more behind than just a thank you and a material gift?

See more photos from Generations Church at our Flickr site at http://flickr.com/share5

Check it out. Got a better caption? Add it to the comments!

Saw this funny combo in Moreno Valley, and thought it would be a good start for our weekly "CAPTION PLEASE" entry. Its a new feature we will be starting… NOW!

As a family who has chosen to become "mobiley homeles (is that a word?), and having seen and experienced this plight before in Boise, we thought it important to recognize and be part of trying to support this effort. Pulling into Orange County last night, where many municipalities have passed no overnight parking ordinances, we discovered how difficult it can be to find a place that feels safe to park for the night with your family.  Thank you to the Junky Car Club for bringing this issue to the public eye.

(Personal note:  This is a personal issue for Chad, who during college lived 3 months in the cab of his pickup after roommates failed to pay the rent and skipped with 2 months of his share that he had paid to them.  For the next 3 months, he showered at the health club, parked in back corners and dark allies, and experienced the stigma and shame that can often be self inflicted when you find yourself in this situation, especially when you believe that nobody would be willing to help you out.  It was a hollow, empty time.  Now imagine finding yourself in that situation as a single mother with a young child…)

See more photos from the Junky Car Club Rally on our FLickr page!

Our booth space was perfectly placed between Extreme Faith Productions, (a concert promoter who was silent auctioning signed band memorabilia like guitars, framed cd’s, and such), and a company named Z-ion Cleanse, who had set up massage chairs with full body de-tox ionic foot baths.  These two booths were likely two of the highest trafficked booths of the show, so we definitely benefited from their overflow as the new kid on the block.

We all but sold out of our Krobo Glass Bead jewlery, saving only 5 pieces to sell online through our online shop.  That means we have now raised close to $2000 for the well drilling at Revival Harvest Academy in Ghana.  We will be getting more Krobo beads as soon as we can get transportation out of Ghana for them.

This show was also the first time for us to see the Project Rwanda coffee bike,
and we were fortunate enought to get it into our booth for the show.  This uniquely designed long-wheelbase bike certainly got people’s attention, and we hope to see a few of the $200 specialty bikes sponsored by folks who stopped by to hear the story.  These $200 sponsorships allow us to provide a micro-finance loan to a coffee grower from  Land of a Thousand Hills Coffee’s Inyakurama co-op in Rwanda