Moran Park: A Faith Community

This past Sunday at church I was given the opportunity to share our story of how Jeff and I "happened upon" Moran Park. Pretty cool. So now I think it's time to tell you that story and fill you in on Moran Park. First, some Moran Park (MP) details. MP is a satellite campus of a bigger church called Ridge Point Community Church. MP was created by a group of people that wanted to serve the neighborhood specific to MP. They put it like this "Moran Park is a neighborhood church serving the area surrounding the Moran Park campus. Moran Park is committed to fixing what’s broken in every aspect of life by reaching lost people and leading them to full life by thinking, loving, serving and living like Jesus."
Mid week 8 weeks ago, Jeff asked if I wanted to try another church this weekend. I said sure. He suggested one just down the street, he didn't know the name. I knew what he was talking about. Rachel -"It has a green sign, right?" Jeff-"Yeah, and free coffee at 9:30!" The free coffee clinched it. That weekend we attended Moran Park for the first time. We were welcomed from the get go. A really nice guy named Charlie introduced himself and just started chatting with us. Learning that we were new to Holland, we invited us to hang out with his small group that night. Wow, thanks. So at 6:00 we met in the park next to the church. There we met Charlie's wife, Susanne, and about 4 other couples. They were so nice, and normal. Not church scary. We all took turns asking questions. Jeff and I asked about the church and what brought these couples to MP. They asked about our life in Mt Pleasant (the other MP) and what brought us to Holland. We enjoyed ourselves and left with an open invitation to the small group and to a potluck at Charlie and Susanne's in 2 weeks. Needless to say, we returned to Moran Park the next Sunday.
We were away for 2 Sundays, but returned for our 3rd time on the 8th of August (my 33rd birthday). This was such a neat day. For this story I will default to Britton's blog. Oh, Britton is the pastor at Moran Park.

prayer at moran park

My time as the pastor at Moran Park continues to be a learning experience. God is doing some incredible things. The other week I was getting ready Sunday morning to preach. I was feeling a lot of distraction and couldn't get my thoughts together. When the service started and we began singing, I kept feeling this sense of distraction among the people there. I wrote it off and kept singing.

When I got up and began to preach I felt an even stronger sense that something was going on and prayed to myself as I started talking. All of a sudden the mic cut out. I quickly changed mics and continued talking for another minute or two. Then the mic cut out again. It was like God was trying to get my attention calmly and then had to cut out the mics twice becuase I wasn't getting it. I shared that I didn't think I was supposed to be preaching that morning. My first thought was, "Oh crap, but now what are we going to do?" I explained to the faith community that I was going to pray and then invited anyone who wanted to come up front to pray to do so in the microphone.

As I was praying, I thought there was no way anyone would come up front and actually pray in front of everyone else. To my suprise, when I finished praying there were 5 people in line to pray. The doubts in my mind kept coming as I thought, "Oh no, I just gave an open mic to random people that i don't even know." Despite my fears, the prayers were beautiful. Powerful, raw prayers of a variety of struggles and praise came from the mouths of those who shared. When the line got down to one or two people, a few more individuals would get up to pray. This went on for 45 minutes. If I would have waited, it probably could have continued all afternoon.

I was going to be teaching on faith - how we are to go to God for more faith as he is the one who gives it, but that was demonstrated by those who came up to pray. I was going to talk about how we need to be open and honest with our doubts and struggles so we can encourage one another towards deeper faith, but that was demonstrated too.

God showed up in a powerful way and demonstrated what I was going to be teaching on. It was unbelievable. We have new people at Moran Park every week so I made a comment at the end, "If you are new to Moran Park, I'm not sure what to tell you. I guess you never know what to expect here or how God will work." www.brittonsmith.blogspot.com

Jeff and I are a part of this. Can you believe it? How grateful and amazed I am that we get to be in this place with these people. Thank you, God! Thank you so much for this amazing gift!
I am thrilled to be with people who want to follow Jesus and who want to love his people. Who recognize that people are real with real issues that need to be addressed. To be in a place where we listen to God and obey. Dang. This is awesome.
I was one of the people who stood in line to pray that morning. I couldn't help it. I had been having such a terrible time with life. Sad and lonely and anxious and discouraged. I could use some prayer. If God was trying to do something, which I believe He was, I wanted to be a part of it.
After the service Charlie and Susanne asked if they could come to our house and pray over/for it. I broke into tears, "that would be amazing". So Charlie and Susanne followed us home and the 4 of us prayed and asked God to fill our home with all of Himself. Thank you Charlie and Susanne.
Phew, that's a lot, I know. If you made it through, thank you. These recent happenings are very important to me and I want you to know about them. Rachel

p.s. After Charlie and Susanne left our house, Jeff looked at me and said "So, I think we've found a church". Yes we have :)

A New Appreciation for the Dutch

Jeff and I had a great Sunday. We started the morning at our new church Moran Park. For lunch, I made sloppy joes in our new kitchen. This is such a big deal! Later in the day we tried a local ice cream shop called Captain Sundae. All of their offerings are maritime themed. It was okay. Certainly no Doozies :) After our mediocre ice cream experience we decided to walk out to the lighthouse. Big Red sits at the front of the channel between Lake Michigan and Lake Macatawa. Oh, it is so beautiful out there. The story is that the Dutch saw this area as a great opportunity for industry and shipping. The government, however,disagreed and would not foot the bill to dig the channel to connect the two lakes. So, the Dutch people dug the channel themselves! Holy cow! This new connection went on to be very profitable and influential in the development of Holland. Jeff loves this, of course. People rising up to take action instead of relying on the government. Just that morning, I was telling Jeff how disappointed I was with the Dutch people. I find their names ridiculous and often impossible to pronounce (Graafschap, DeLeeuw, Nyenhuis, Saar for example). Are there no rules governing spelling in their homeland? All my sounding out skills I learned in kindergarten are useless here in Holland. But after learning that these same people dug a channel with their own hands (amazing), I figure I can let the name thing go :) (For a more complete history of the creation of the channel click here.)

Moran Park Clean Up Day

Jeff and I found a church here (I'll go into that in another post) called Moran Park. It sits next to a city park with the same name. Moran Park the church is commited to serving this particular neighborhood. One way they do that is by keeping the park clean and tidy. Once a month we gather under the big gazebo with edgers, wheelbarrows, blowers and the like. We spend the next 2-2 1/2 hours doing whatever needs to be done. Today's activities included edging, pulling weeds, blowing off the shuffleboard court, sweeping the sand back into the sand pit, and many other general clean up things.
I had a chance to talk with a couple new people. Well, new to me anyway. Ben is a dentist and we chatted about my dental implants. I spent a good chunk of time with Sue. Sue is a middle school teacher. We talked about all sorts of things. One of which was mentoring with the 70x7 program. 70x7 is a non-profit recovery program for addicts and also a community re-entry program for ex cons. In short, ex cons get involved with 70x7 to fulfill their community service requirements. If during the community service program the person shows reliability and a willingness to make changes in their life, they are elgible for a job. Which is where New Day Staffing comes in. New Day partners with local businesses to offer jobs only to ex-felons. Once you have a job you must also have a mentor. As a mentor, you help set goals (physical, emotional, and spiritual) and provide accountability and encouragement along the way. I'd like to be a mentor. Sue is a mentor and she addressed a lot of my questions and concerns about being a mentor. This is such a paltry explanation of all that 70x7 does. But I'm trying not to overwhelm you with this first post. I'm sure I'll talk more about it later.

On the homefront, Jeff finished wiring our kitchen! We now have a working sink, garbage disposal and dishwasher, and new outlets! Hooray for Jeffrey!

That's enough for today. Love you all, Rachel

Welcome to Holland

Hello friends and family. As you know, Jeff and I have moved from Mt. Pleasant to Holland. Our life is in transition and so many things are new and unknown. I thought it would be good for me to keep a bit of a journal of this time in our lives. I also wanted to share this time with all of you. My hope for this blog is that I will be faithful to post and that you will enjoy being able to stay connected with us. Rachel