Resounding Service

Part of our ten-week Rooted Discipleship opportunity involves participating in a serve experience. One of the groups in our current Rooted recently went to an emergency shelter in Santa Paula to serve a meal to those who have been residing there temporarily. The impact of that visit is still reverberating.

Kay Wilson-Bolton, who runs the shelter, featured the group in her weekly update saying, "The good-hearted group of people from Ventura Missionary Church spent their evening serving beautiful home-cooked food...and truly breaking bread with them. The sat with them at dinner and made some new friends."

But the story doesn't stop there. One of the group members connected one of the residents with Project Understanding in Ventura and excitedly reported that there is hope that housing can be found for this man. On top of that, another group member plans to offer a job to that same man. Still another group member spent six hours on another day at the shelter after the Rooted Group visited, helping with whatever needed to be done.

Some had been anxious about participating in this Serve Experience, but the group meeting the week after they actually served was overflowing with joy about that special evening and all that had been done through the group members since! When the love of Christ is shared, it resounds in the hearts of those who receive the love, and also in the hearts of those who share it.