February-March 2011

It has been a tough season readjusting to the winter weather of Minnesota after spending Christmas in the southernmost part of the U.S...But the last couple of months at Source we have been hosting our annual spring break groups to immerse college students in the realities of urban outreach (what it looks like to serve in the homeless/artist community of the diverse neighborhood of South Minneapolis). This is one of the times each year that we focus on training other individuals for serving in the city. As part of the urban immersion, we also held an awareness seminar on homeless youth and sex-trafficking in the city of Minneapolis, as we have been renovating our Source Annex building (building that will be set up for women getting out of sex-trafficking-we will be working together with Breaking Free, an organization dedicated to educating and providing services to women and girls who have been victims of commercial sexual exploitation (prostitution/sex-trafficking) and need assistance escaping the violence in their lives). The students expressed how the spring break trip altered the way they viewed reaching out to the homeless and marginalized and how they want to continue to share the love of Jesus with the marginalized in their city.
I am also helping organize a traveling art installation that will raise awareness and benefit Sex Trafficking Victims in the Midwest. We hope to have a variety of visual and multimedia art work. The focus is to spotlight the domestic issue of Sex Trafficking, domestic Prostitution, and lack of opportunities for women to get out of this cycle of violence. This show will have initial appearances at the Minneapolis Mayday festival and the Demand Change Events in May 2011. The hope is that it will also travel to galleries, community centers, colleges, & churches over the next year and will accompany awareness presentations and prayer vigils.
Thank you for all of you who have been praying for us. God is continuing to bring those that are searching for you...we visited a shelter again last night where we were able to invite several to come to our church on Saturday night...They were so excited after coming, expressing that they could really sense the Holy Spirit within our church and how they were so encouraged by that!
Please continue to pray for me as I work with artists that are hanging shows in our Fallout Urban Art Center art gallery. Many of them are art students from the Minneapolis College of Art & Design across the street. Another staff and I have also begun a women's small group on the MCAD campus for a few believers that live on the art campus...we're excited to see God encourage these women as they are wanting to pursue God more:)