What’s “the parking ministry”?

Wow, has it been almost a month since we blogged?  yes… 

And what have we been doing with ourselves???

We recently finished “The Twelve Days of Parking”!!!  And it’s more than just a song….

Our church rents a building which just happens to be next door to the fairgrounds here in Monroe.  Long story short, to help pay our rent, our landlord allows us to park cars on the property during fair events and that helps us to be able to afford the rent.  It’s much more complicated that all that, but you get the general idea.

So, in 12 days, 79 people invested over 2,800 hours and parked about13,000 cars. Who says small churches can’t do big things?  There was a huge range of involvement—from youth in our church who came out to wave plastic yellow bats to direct cars, to grandmas and grandpas who came to serve dinner to the parking team in the breakroom, to stay-at home moms who would bring snacks and make cookies, to people who bought tons of bottled water and gatorade to keep workers hydrated, to people who spent hours working by themselves mowing the lot and painting parking space lines on the grass.  It was real.  It was fun.  And it was real fun to function as a church family working together. 

Here’s Brian directing traffic…..  When it got dark, we all traded our plastic bats in for some short light sabers (orange plastic attachment on a flashlight).

 

Jocelyn just outside the ticket booth on a chilly day (showing off my red pants!)  I’m so glad we decided to store a bunch of our winter stuff when we went to Brazil (though we weren’t anticipating using it this winter!!) 

And we had some hot days as well….

So anyway, that was our life for 12 days.  And nights (as we both had dreams about parking cars!!)

 

In other news…

We’re getting to know Rosetta quite well.  Rosetta Stone that is.  Brian completed Level 1 about a week ago, and I just finished it yesterday!  On to Level 2 now…

And we’re still working on Visa stuff.  We’ve been to two different police stations, the courthouse, the bank a couple of times, the post office, and Seattle twice (for getting a renewed prescription for formula).  Lots of errandy things getting done…. but still lots of waiting to happen.  Thanks so much for praying for us…

encouraged and semi-bi-lingually,

Jocelyn & Brian<><