Here’s a fun experience Danielle and I had recently, which I think is actually very prophetic.  Through seemingly ordinary events, I believe God shared with Danielle and me his heart for Boyle Heights, our immigrant neighbors, and our calling in this part of town:

This past fall while Danielle and I were engaged, our community member Jenelle told us how someone hooked her up with info on a free film screening in Pasadena.  I was not interested, but Nelly sent me the link: the film was called The Gardener (it may be retitled before its release) and it was by a certain director whose films I respect.  I had no clue what it was about, but hey, free movie.

Danielle and I left our office with just enough time make it to the showing.  However, when we parked at the theatre, we lost our car keys in the car.  Ten minutes evaporated as we looked for (and found) them.  Poof! – we were late.

We dashed up the theatre steps, hoping they’d admit us, and the longest line I have ever seen for a movie suddenly stared us in the face.  It started at the box office, traveled the breadth of the mall’s second floor, draped down a 2-story staircase, around a corner and up another 2-story stair.  Clearly, most of these people would not get in.

We decided to risk it and found our place at the end.  After 15 minutes, a busybodied “industry person” came by, asked out ages, and took us out of line and to the front.  Suddenly, someone was whisking us into the theatre, leaving several hundred liners behind.  Entering the mostly full screening room, we quickly found two seats next to each other in the center middle.  They were the last two adjacent seats available.

The movie began.  Three shots into the credits, my heart lept in my chest: “That’s 4th Street,” I thought. “And that’s the bridge from downtown across the LA River to Boyle Heights!  And that’s Evergreen Cemetery!”

Soon I realized all the film’s characters lived in Boyle Heights, and not just anywhere in Boyle Heights: they’re houses were just blocks from my house and the other Restore LA houses.  The film’s main duo, a father and son who are illegal immigrants, reside in the film on a street three blocks from the apartment where I am writing this blog.  Danielle and I walked it the other day and found a street sign used in the film.  It took us four minutes to get there.

The Gardener turned out to be a terrific film about the plight of ordinary people dealing with impossible situations.  It is hopeful, tender, and sad.  It explores issues that God has plopped in our laps ever since He moved us to this neighborhood: the role of human trafficking in getting Mexicans across the border, the families who every day face the possibility of being split up by deportation, and the economic realities that shape immigrants’ decisions to cross borders illegally.

There could not have been a more relevant film for us to see.  The protagonist in the film, a Hispanic father, even makes the hour-long “BH to BH” commute — living in Boyle Heights, working in Beverly Hills — as Danielle did for some time.  The film got all its depictions right: the two neighborhoods could not be more different.

After the film, a power-suited lady with a clipboard quietly asked if we would like to be two of the thirty audience members who got to discuss the film with a marketing expert.  We would get some free movie passes if we participated.  Wow!  Selected out of hundreds to see the film, then to discover it was filmed 3 blocks from my house was enough!  Being picked for the final 30 was over the top.  Clearly our God was speaking to us through these events.

So we joined the 30-person discussion, which was insightful.  23 of the 30 admitted to crying during one scene or another.  And I started thinking…  The sympathy, the emotions expressed by the theatre-goers were great; the film itself was great… but God wanted more.  God wanted action.  God wanted relationship between us and people like these characters.  And I realized God is not kidding.  Was not kidding when he led us to BH and is not kidding now.

Even though I live here in BH, I do not pretend to have done much to help anyone.  I can be a slow mover and miss out on what God wants to do.  But this little prophetic incident has put some fire under me.  I am thinking about how I use my time.  Enough said.

Hey friends,

I know we have neglected our poor little blog for far too long.  To sate your appetite for Restore LA news while we’re revamping our blogging strategy, I’m posting this entry: one story, of many, from the origins of Restore LA.  Special thanks to journalism major Michelle Kim’s paper on our community for some of the info (as cited).  Also, non-Restorers’ names have been changed to protect privacy.

COMPLETING “THE CORE”

Autumn, 2007 – Spring, 2008

All who believed were together and had all things in common.  They sold their possessions and goods and distributed the proceeds to all, as any had need.  Day by day, they spent much time in prayer, they broke bread at home, and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God.

-Acts 2:44-47

THE PLAYERS WERE: Justin, his new roommate Don, recent Canadian immigrants Matthew and Shirley Rayburn, and their 1-year-old daughter Adia.

In November 2007, they “decided that they would put their beliefs to work by practicing hospitality to the unfortunate and seeking to repair racial divisions on the micro level” (Kim).  They would imitate Claiborne and their heroes from Red Moon Rising by moving to the inner city, sharing one house, planting a community garden, praying together, and attempting to live simply.  Excitement brimmed in brainstorming sessions, but there was just one problem: In order to plant their own Simple Way, they needed one more female to join them.

“I can’t move into a house of all men and be the only woman,” Shirley said at one of the emerging community’s brainstorm gatherings.  A room of men nodded in agreement: it wouldn’t work.  This came as their move date, May 1st, 2008, loomed just two months away.  Months of pitches to married couples as well as social justice-minded single ladies had produced no companion female pilgrim for Shirley.  They prayed, perhaps anticipating a two month-long wait for an answer.

That Wednesday night Shirley attended an event raising awareness about human trafficking.  An avid trafficking abolitionist, Mrs. Rayburn and her husband had even co-founded of a non-profit to that aim two years prior called Voice for the Voiceless. After the meeting, Shirley mingled in the crowd of likeminded justice seekers.  Talking to an acquaintance named Kristin Martin, Shirley mentioned in passsing how she and her husband were excited to soon move to a neighborhood near downtown LA. Words emerged from Kristin’s mouth that surprised them both.  “I’ll move in with you guys if you move down there,” she said, not knowing a single stitch of detail about the Rayburns’ intended move, its inner city mission, or the two other men who were to share the house.  Later discussions would reveal how out of character for Kristin, normally quite a reserved lady, this announcement was.  “I just felt something prompt me to say, ‘I’ll move in with you,’ even though I didn’t know at all what they were doing.”  The troupe soon discovered that Kristin had not only lived in an intentional community before but had actually led one in the Bay Area.  She also had a lifelong passion for urban justice issues to boot!  And so it was, the founding crew of Restore LA was completed when a young lady, following an inner “prompt,” made a surprising suggestion.

Kristin Martin working on her 1955 Studebaker

The six “Restorers” (a nickname taken from Isaiah 58:12) cruised neighborhoods on every side of downtown, looking for the perfect place …which they found!  A 5-bedroom fixer-upper near MacArthur Park for $2,600 a month.  Having compared budgets, the Rayburns, Kristin, Don, and Justin agreed that $2600 was the highest they could go.  The landlord, seeing an opportunity to host good tenants, promised to negotiate the price down further when the gang came by to sign the lease.  Shirley reserved a table at a nearby vegan restaurant for a “lease-signing party” to follow.  But, when the newly formed community of six arrived, the landlord backpedaled to $3000 a month with a fast-talking air.  With two weeks to go, everyone had already given notice to their landlords and now faced the possibility of homelessness.  The party that evening showcased the six tired Restorers hunched over around their table, cupping their faces in their hands.

Justin snuck some minutes away from his employer the next day to search the web for a place where, as Michelle Kim put it, “he, four additional adults, one child and a full-grown canine” could coexist.  Westside Rentals.com listed a $2,900 5-bedroom house in Boyle Heights, a neighborhood east of downtown that the group had not much considered.  The Restorers once again parked their cars on an unfamiliar street and wandered up to the modest white house.  Once inside, they passed slowly from room to room pondering the pregnant possibility of each nook and cranny.

A Mrs. Marlene Valdez emailed specifics on the house and introduced her and her husband, Sergio, the owners of the rental company.  Shirley and Justin were one hour’s drive apart –she in Pasadena, he in Long Beach — when they read the now-famous email at roughly the same time.  They read and then re-read.  “We have a passion for ‘voiceless’ children,” the email said, echoing the cry of Shirley’s non-profit, Voice for the Voiceless.  The email introduced Sergio and Marlene Valdez as Boyle Heights natives who had gotten into real estate to help low-income families find affordable, quality housing.  Gasps emerged in Pasadena and Long Beach.  Glancing again at the emails, Justin’s eye caught the price information.  It read: “$2,600 per month.”  “$2,600!” thought Justin.  “That can’t be.  Westside Rentals says it’s $2,900.”  He checked Westside again and saw, yes, “$2,900;” but when Justin casually asked Marlene the “monthly due date for the $2,600,” she responded as though she’d never planned anything but the magic number.

Nate, Matthew, Tim, Justin (top), Kristin, Shirley, Do (middle), Adia, and pet Katie (bottom) at Restore LA’s first home

Hey friends, visitors, and everyone else…

Just a friendly note to say that YES, we are still going strong as a community.  In fact, we’ve been too busy to blog.   Some of the updates you’ll be hearing about soon: we expanded (!), we added two new (or three, or four!) new members, a couple of us took a trip to Africa last summer, and we had a community wedding – two of our community members got hitched recently – to each other (see below!).  Overall -  we’ve been really busy doing community stuff.

So yes – please feel free to contact us – and now that things are settling down a little bit we’ve got plans to update this site more.

Most sincerely, Restore LA

A Wedding!

Hey all!

Here’s a letter I wrote to a friend of mine about why being a follower of Jesus in Los Angeles is so cool.  Here’s a recap of one week’s adventure!

Dear Sammy,

Had such a great day today!  After a grouchy wake up, I went on a human trafficking outreach to Compton, a prostitution-heavy city 20 minutes south of my home in east Los Angeles.  Team was led by Ruben, a 30-ish outreacher extraordinaire.  He is awesome, totally the real deal disciple-maker.  He and his family of 5 were missionaries in Morocco and France and now he and his wife associate pastor a church mostly made up of ex-gang members, like Ruben himself.

I drove with him to rendezvous with the rest of the team, 5 radical blonde 20-something female interns from the church Expression58.  First we set out to distribute trafficking awareness information to seedy motels that rent rooms “by the hour” on the strip.  (Hourly rates are illegal, btw, so that points toward criminal activity.)  No sooner had we pulled into the parking lot of the first motel than we encountered two thugs — pimps? — and two prostitutes.  Or were they?  We started talking to them, and soon found out we were interrupting a sting operation!  The thugs and prostitutes were police in disguise.  We quickly left.

Plan B was prayer-walking and starting conversations about trafficking in a giant swap meet – a maze of many many shops over two floors.  Soon, we found ourselves outside praying with two women who had some undefined “connection” with prostitution: Ann-Marie and her sister Tomacia.  Ann-Marie started crying as we opened the conversation about labor exploitation.  Her boyfriend had been killed on the street one and a half days earlier (something to do with drugs), and she asked us to help her get off the Compton streets.  Her sister was overjoyed as we told her that God had planned our meeting and was even using their recent tragedy as a wakeup call to rescue them.  We’re now in the process of following up with them and hope to get them into housing.

Community praying: Maria, Kristin, and Danielle.

We ran into other women who obviously work as prostitutes today.  What an exciting time we live in.  So much evil, yet it seems there is a lot of breaking through of the light.  Years of labor and desire for effective urban ministry are bursting into fruit!  A homeless friend named Ian — of the L.A. homeless variety, meaning he owns a cell phone and a hundred other gadgets — has started spending a night or two a week in our living room.  Last week Danielle and I went to a yard sale that a sister intentional community hosted and bought him a great dresser.  Now Ian keeps clothes, backpacks, canned goods, whatever he wants in this dresser in our dining room and cooks for himself in our kitchen.  Best of all — he’s started cleaning up after himself!

Ian’s starting to change bit by bit, which amazes me.  He doesn’t fully grasp the change that’s occurring.  I’ve known Ian for 3+ years now, and finally I am able to laugh with him, argue with him, joke with him like a normal human being.  He’s middle-aged and has a lot of health problems.  He knows God is real.  We’re trying to convince him that God also has a plan for Ian to enjoy — not just survive — the 2nd half of his life!  Oh, and by the way, Ian, you do have a 2nd half still ahead.

The harvest is plentiful in Los Angeles.  Big fat beautiful fruit is waiting to be harvested.  Ripe wheat is waiting.  The nations of the earth have come to Los Angeles because of natural hunger, but we will bring them the sweet things of the Master’s table and the new wine and the water that takes away thirst forever.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Hey all, here’s PART II in my letter to Sam, telling him about my crazy adventurous week.  More exciting rendezvous with destiny!

Restore LA’s prayer room.

Yesterday two amazing friends from Harvest Rock Church, both filmmakers, came down to my house in “96% Latino” Boyle Heights to collaborate on a project.  One is an African American dancer/producer/singer named Garland, only 21 yet a very mature artist.  The other, a dryly funny Chinese editor/producer/DP named Jinder, 24.  I’m editing several 5-minute films for them about the well-known dance group We Are Heroes.  One hilarious moment occurred when, looking for lunch, the three of us entered a local Spanish-speaking grocery store in my neighborhood.  I bet the folks at Vallarta Market have never before had a black, Asian, and white trio of goofy young males saunter into their nook.

Community and deep-rooted discipleship is starting to take place.  Every week I get together with two friends: Bruce, a mentor for 4 years now and a fantastic drummer and discipler, and Isaac, a great friend who likes to question me on spiritual matters.  Isaac’s in the midst of confronting a lot of old demons right now.  In subtle ways, deliverance and friendship are unfolding as we three sip cappuccinos at the best coffee shop in the world: Peet’s Coffee & Tea in Pasadena.

I really do count myself most blessed to live in Southern California.  On Sunday, Danielle and I ate breakfast in the open air courtyard of a hilariously offbeat restaurant named Burger Continental.  It’s known for karaoke and “bottomless champagne and coffee” breakfasts.  Then we met up with our intentional community members from Restore LA at Eaton Canyon Park, where we hiked to a waterfall and pitched sticks to our dog Katie, who dutifully retrieved them from the pool.  After that, the 10 of us barbequed till sundown.

Restore LA community event.

The Los Angeles area features the most beautiful and the most ugly forces in nature and in human nature right next to each other.  A week ago Saturday, Danielle and I met friends for a picnic at The Getty Museum in the rolling hills of the West Side.  We looked at internationally renowned artist galleries and ate mediterranean salad in the cliffside food-court.  Then last Saturday I spent the night in a tent with my housemate Tim … on Skid Row, the highest concentrated area of poverty in the US.  Just for fun – ya know?  Danielle drove us to the corner of Gladys and 5th and we told her, “Here’s where you last saw us in case anyone asks.”  She covered her face, shook her head, smiled, and said, “I hope I don’t have to remember that.”  We heard ambulances and fire engines rush by that night, saw headlights bore through our tent on their way to an emergency, and listened to the voices of homeless men who sleep every night on Gladys St.

It’s a good season, a season of growth and outreach and renewed energy.  One week ago an incident occurred which pretty much sums up this stretch of life.  Tyler and Caleb, two young guys who dropped everything in collegetown, Ohio to help the start-up homeless ministry The Jonah Project, called, asking if they could store a truck load of Sunny D-Light at our place.  I said sure.  15 minutes later a whole truck full of newly-donated Sunny-D arrives, and we’re hauling it to the cellar under the backyard.  We’re talking a TON of Sunny-D.  I see my neighbor Clarissa in her car nearby looking with amazement at the sheer magnitude of phony orange beverage.  Clarissa’s very open to us, a single mother of 4 kids who works at SoCal’s equivalent to a Kroger and lives in a two bedroom apartment next to her sister’s family.  I run over and hand her two cases of Sunny-D, and she’s all smiles and thank yous.  Soon her sister and sister’s husband come out and ask if they can have some too.  ”Of course!”  Just so happens that the husband drinks Sunny-D every morning for breakfast, so this drink has special value to him.  5 minutes later the married couple step onto our lawn with two dollies and start helping us move the Sunny-D to the cellar.  A neighborhood work project has just erupted!  ”Thank you Jesus,” I pray.  ”This is how you plan community!  Spontaneous community!”  And already-good friendships with neighbors just got better.  Their kids are running around our yard, and 3 hispanic and 3 white people are moving Sunny-D into our cellar to be stored for the homeless to drink next week.  Beautiful.

Anyways, it’s true that LA can be a pill.  I mean our version of local law enforcement is Arnold Schwarzeneggar.  But still, the many many beauties — some famous, some hidden — of this most diverse and storied city have become earmarks of home.  Justin’s home.

“Blessed are those … whose hearts are set on pilgrimage.”

Psalm 84:5

Community members: Do, Tim, Kristin, Shirley, Nate

Matthew, Justin, Adia, and pet Katie.

Last summer a wise friend of mine from a house of prayer nearby prayed for us at Restore LA one day and sensed the Lord speaking the words of that Psalm over our community.  Blessed are those whose hearts are set on pilgrimage.

Those were not the words I was hoping to hear.  We had asked my friend to pray that God would open the doors for us to purchase a 10-bedroom property in our neighborhood.  This place was sweet.  Two houses on one lot with two kitchens, ten bedrooms, four bathrooms, and a monastery-esque garden.  A perfect hub for our growing intentional community.

The property we tried to buy.

We had been pre-approved for a loan but the broker was sending us mixed signals.  We prayer-walked around that place and prayed and listened for God’s voice.  And then my friend told us Blessed are those whose hearts are set on pilgrimage.

Booooo.

I wanted to hear a formula for success: “Fast for three days, and it’s yours,” “Walk around the property seven times, and the owner will call with good news,” “Pray and you will conquer.”

A week later I dreamed that God had another plan for our community, and it did not include that dreamy property at present.  The next day, the broker told us “no” for the last time.  We had prayed and walked and strategized for months — to no avail.  Was all that time and work … a waste?

“God works all things together for our good.”

Romans 8:28

I believe God led us through that process for a reason, regardless of the outcome.**    Those of us who prayer-walked together formed the sort of bond that is essential for building a Spirit-led community.  Those of us who thought up creative, missional ideas about uses for the house saw a vision of what God’s Kingdom on earth, in our neighborhood, could look like.  And then, another priceless gain: a message from God that part of the identity He was forming in us was to be a people “whose hearts are set on pilgrimage.”

pil • grim • age

- noun

Any journey, especially a long one, undertaken as a quest or as an act of religious devotion.

We carry on, with an aim to do more than survive on this pilgrimage.  Fueled by our “devotion” to Jesus, we will thrive on this, the path he’s chosen for us.  We won’t look for security in homes or in houses, but in obedience to the Father’s will.  We won’t be fazed by trials, circumstances, or even personal failures… OK, we may be fazed for a moment!  But we recover and return to the journey of faith, believing that God has a purpose for our community in Boyle Heights and that HE will establish it (with our partnership of course), if it’s worth establishing at all.

For anyone trying to get a beat on what Restore LA is all about (and that includes me and half my friends), here’s a good lead:  A pilgrimage.  A long journey together, full of devotion to God and friendship with each other.

I believe we will own property that suits our mission, that our authority in this neighborhood will grow, and that we’ll be able to impact more and more people with the Grace of Jesus Christ as these things fall into place.  We’re not there yet.  But I’m convinced God’s maturing us along the way.

In the meantime, we now rent three houses within a mile radius instead of one central property, and I’m thinking and wondering … what delightful purpose does God have in that?

**Just a note about these faith-journeys: Where God’s will and man’s will collide and diverge can be hard to discern.  I ended up believing that it was more the broker than God who kept us from owning the property but that God was going to use even the broker’s manipulation and resistance for our good.   We’ll only understand exactly what went down when we get to heaven, but we’ll be too busy being flabbergasted by God’s glory to give a rip.

I know, I know…it’s been a very long time since last posting. In all that time passed, much has been going on! Our community is no longer one household, it’s three! And there’s not just 6,7, or 8 of us, there’s 10!

We were forced to find new housing as Inez will be moving onto new owners. One of the most important things to us was to stay close to Inez St. and relationships formed there during the past 1 1/2 years. Within such a strict location, there was nothing to be found that would house all 10 of us! So instead of Inez we now have the House for Men, Rayburnville, and Mademoiselle’s Manor. Luckily, Rayburnville happens to be practically just across the street from Inez – which is great to have someone so close to the kids we’ve built relationships with!

With all these changes come a lot of adjustments. While we continue to be within walking distance of each other, “life together” is a little more apart. Over the coming months we’ll be reconfiguring what community looks like for us. Which to me seems both exciting and a little exhausting.

Which brings me to the question that brought me to write this blog post in the first place. It’s a question posed by a SF friend, Mark Scandrette – who has been experimenting with community over the past decade. The question is:

What does it mean to live life connected to my Creator?

Sometimes in community you can get so caught up with “community.” Sometimes in church you get so caught up with “church.” It’s not about living together. It’s not about being in one house or three. It’s not about church or religion. It’s not about how much change I can see in my self or my neighborhood. It’s really about living life connected to my Creator.

I’m including the video clip that I found that question posed in…it’s Mark talking on what he’s learned about “Missional Community.” He sums it up, I think, in this sentence “The missional journey is about getting to a place where you trust there is something greater working in you than yourself.“

To see Mark’s whole talk, click here.