“Christmas again. Damn!” His words are barely audible but his wife knows his feelings well.  She sees the hurt come into his eyes when the kids come home from school talking about what they want for Christmas.  It is the same expression she sees on the faces of other unemployed fathers around the housing project.

She knows this year will be no different from the last.  All her husband’s hustle, his day-labor jobs, his pickup work will not be enough to put presents under a tree.  They will do well to keep the heat on.  His confident, promising deceptions allow the children the luxury of their dreams a while longer.  She will cover for him again because she knows he is a good man.  His lies are his wishes, his flawed attempts to let his children know what the older ones know but never admit: the gifts are not from daddy.

He will not go with her to stand in the “free toy” lines with all the others.  He cannot bring himself to do it.  It is too stark a reminder of his own impotence.  And if their home is blessed again this year with a visit from a Christian family bearing food and beautifully wrapped presents for the kids, he will stay in the bedroom until they are gone.  He will leave the smiling and graciousness to his wife.  His joy for the children will be genuine.  But so is the heavy ache in his stomach as his image of himself as a provider is dealt another blow.

Christmas. That wonderful, awful time when giving hearts glow warm and bright while fading embers of a poor man’s pride are doused black.

I recently went with a group of 25 people to Crestline, CA by Lake Gregory. It is a cabin that the sisters in company with Mary own. The purpose was a silence retreat meditating on the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola. When I first got there, they asked us to not only silence our physical body, but to silence our heart and mind as well. I am the kind of person who is always thinking about the stuff that is happening and what is coming. Always thinking about work, family, church, and everything you can think of. I thought that it was going to be so difficult to silence my mind, and I thought that I was going to spend the whole weekend asking God to silence my insight. Of course, God impressed me and I was able to silence very quickly.

I learned many things about God that weekend, but the one thing I got stuck with was something that I knew, something very simple yet very powerful and easy to forget. The one thing that got stuck in me is that God is always working. He is always working in people, in situations, in conversations, in problems, in satisfactions, in ME. Now, the fact of knowing that God is always working didn’t change the way I see things now, but two questions did. Because of the fact the God is always working can be meaningless if a person does not experience it. Therefore, these two questions were the ones that changed the way that I live now. The first question is: How do I find God in everything that I do? Because God is always working in me and in everything around, how do I find Him? This is very intentional and it involves a reflection time of the day every night. The second question is not very usual to hear, but it is just the other way of the first question: How do I let God to find ME in everything that I do? This one needs to be very intentional as well, but with this one I don’t wait until the end of my days to reflect. I try to make pauses during the day to let God encounter me in my activities. The ways I do it is by praying or meditating at time throughout the day.

When I first thought of silence I thought of emptiness, not doing anything. But I found that to be in silence does not mean to only stay still. Silence means an opportunity to connect with God and let God to connect with me.

The Hope Community Center on Center St. is a place where kids from K-12^th come and get help with homework, sounds simple enough. What new neighbors walking by might not know is that on Monday afternoons Facia, a member of the Center St. NAC, is coordinating the center’s activities for the day.  Facia is a well-equipped and confident leader that is responsible for the operation of Step Up program, along with other parents from the neighborhood. Not only does she coordinate the after school program on Mondays, including the coordinating of outside and neighborhood volunteers, known as Amigos, she also enjoys reading with new and learning readers. She can be found at the Center other days touring new parents that are interested in participating. Facia is an example of what a community center looks like when the neighbors are directing and owning what they have to offer to their community.

When: Saturday, December 17^th 9am – 6pm

Where: Harbor Christian Fellowship, 740 W. Wilson, Costa Mesa, CA 92627

Click here for more information!

Join with our community as One Church with our immigrant brothers and sisters for our second annual fasting and prayer vigil for immigration on November 7. We will share stories of compassion, struggle and transformation to learn what is like to be the stranger and how God’s word compels us to listen and be active agents of His love with the immigrant in our midst.

We will be sharing a communal meal to break the fast at 6pm followed by a prayer vigil. More information to come soon! 

“What I did on my summer vacation…” Well, it wasn’t really a “summer vacation” – it was a sabbatical. A what? A sabbatical. “Originally from the Greek sabbatikós. Noun: Any extended period of leave from one’s customary work, especially for rest, to acquire new skills or training, etc.” Yikes! Rest? New skills? Training? This definition definitely appeals to my high-achiever instincts and my compulsive need to “do”. But then there’s that part about rest. I can do this. 7 weeks with no schedule, no plan – I’ll wing it. I will make a holy space in my life. God will speak to me in big ways. It will be great! Hmmmm…

I began preparation for my sabbatical in April to make sure that I could actually walk away from work with a clear mind. I wanted to enjoy 7 weeks without a schedule or a plan. I didn’t want to be thinking about work or what I was going to have to jump into as soon as I returned. I would be free like a bird! By the time I left, I was able to put everything in order and walk away feeling good. Off to a great start, right? Again, hmmmm…

Here’s how this period of “rest, new skills and training” started out for me: Friday, Saturday and Sunday I packed up my house on Balboa Island and prepared to move. Monday, I finished my degree at Vanguard University after four years of study. Tuesday I packed suitcases for a wedding and a honeymoon. Wednesday, we left for Hawaii. Thursday we tracked down a wedding license. Friday we got married. Phew! My two teenage boys were with us for the first part but then we put them on a plane and had a week by ourselves to honeymoon. On our way home we picked up an 8 week old puppy…we didn’t think it would be that much more work. Yet again, hmmmm…

Upon our return we moved into our new house and unpacked boxes for a week. I started to feel like rest was right around the corner! Oh, wait…my relatives were all coming in for the reception party I was planning for 140 people. I was excited but not rested…something was blocking my restful sabbatical! Fun. Family. Puppies. Blessings. I started to think that I was not doing it right. I’m all about doing things right. I was failing. I was NOT a free bird – I was lost and floundering! This realization was not helping put me in a restful place either! I needed help!
My new husband, Jeff sat me down for a meeting. Seriously…paper, pencils, lists – the whole nine yards. It worked. We figured out what I needed to feel rested. We made a plan. We made a schedule. Who knew that I actually needed a plan to rest? Suddenly, with my new sabbatical schedule I began to fit in all the things I had dreamed about before I started. I read books. I looked at art and nature. I listened to music. I watched movies. I went to the beach. I “lunched” with friends. I cooked. I did yoga. I napped. I also waited for God to speak to me in a big way. But the more I tried to hear from Him, the harder it was to hear…I was running out of time and started to panic.

Then it hit me. I needed to stop trying. God was already there. God was in ALL of it – from the beginning to the end. He was there at the wedding, the honeymoon, the move, the party, the art and music and cooking. He was there as I read and napped and watched movies. Now THAT is big! God showed me once again that He reveals Himself wherever and however we need to experience Him. He is in our doing and in our resting. There is not one place where He is not! It took me about 5 weeks into it to figure it out, but I did figure it out. I’m not someone who can wing it. I do better with a plan. This is important. I need to hold on to this truth until my next sabbatical in 2018. In the end, I didn’t fail! I rested. I acquired new skills. I trained. And through it all – God did speak to me. He was there…as He always is – in a big way!

Join our community for a night of experiences and activities related to poverty as we take time to learn from each other.  We hope you can make it!

When: Friday, November 18, 2011 from 6:30-8:30pm

Where: Harbor Christian Fellowship Church 740 W. Wilson St. Costa Mesa, CA 92627

Contact: Monse Rivera at 949-645-0075 or Monse@mikacdc.org

By Walter Garcia, Neighborhood Advisor – Baker St.

For the last three summers, parents from Baker have come together to plan activities for their children during the summer.  Each summer, we have come up with fun activities and some of them seem to be becoming neighborhood traditions: going to the local parks, visiting the library, and going to the movies together.

Two things went extremely well this summer: A visit to a new park outside the city and summer camp!

For the first time, we visited O’Neil Park and with the help of 5 parents from the Baker neighborhood had a blast. We were able to connect and share not only food but also try some new experiences like hiking into the wilderness and doing a sing along on the way to the park and coming back.

The second thing was that I had a great time with three of the Baker boys and one from Center at our the summer camp we attended with Urban Life in Big Bear.  None of us really knew what to expect but we had a great time on the water, playing in the mud, riding bikes and doing a ropes course!  In addition, the students were taught all week about the love that God had for them and how this is shown through their whole lives. I was blessed to have experienced camp with these boys and to see how they came closer to God.

By Monse Rivera, Volunteer Coordinator

When I think about the summer of 2011, I think of Mika’s Summer Reading Program with the kids. This summer we decided to focus only on reading skills with the elementary students.  We consistently heard from teachers and parents that their kids were not reading at their grade level and struggling in school because of it.  I’m grateful we had the opportunity to help our kids with specific reading activities like memorization, practicing their site words and one on one reading.

At the end of summer program, the parents shared how this program was of a great help for their kids. They said that their kids discovered a new passion for reading and enjoyed doing it more.  Our volunteers were a huge asset to the program.  I am grateful for their commitment and their willingness to share their passion for reading. I clearly saw how all the pieces came together to make this program a successful tool to equip our kids to be better students.  It was definitely a team effort.