thankfulness

so yesterday was thanksgiving.

i'm sure most people experienced something similar to what i did.

lot's of food. lot's of family.

ha... i actually was fortunate enough to have not one, not two, but THREE thanksgiving feasts this year! tuesday, wednesday and thursday were all celebrations of this holiday called thanksgiving. and i know it's kind of lame to bring up things that you're thankful for just because it's thanksgiving, but as a christian living in america, i'll take all the reminders i can get!

what i'm most thankful for this year is something called New Family. as i gathered together with various friends & family to celebrate & give thanks... i realized that all of these people are my family. and not just in a corny way like, "we're so close it feels like we're family."

no.

God has set it up in a way that when we embrace the kingdom & manna way of life and say together that God is our only king, then we become New Family. we're no longer divided by race, age, gender or anything else in our world that separates us. we are a new family.

at our first thanksgiving gathering, my friend nate invited a man named bill to join us for dinner. nate met bill at a coffee shop a few weeks ago. he was taking his dog moses for a walk & just started up a conversation with him... as bill knelt down to pet moses, he began to weep. bill had no plans for thanksgiving, so he accepted nate's invitation. we all sat down and began sharing what we were thankful for... and when it got to bill he said, "i'm not thankful for much... i'm thankful for nate... and for all of you. i don't have anybody to celebrate thanksgiving with, so you're all my family."

back in action

hey family in blog land. it's been too long my friends! i THINK i might finally have some time to dedicate here. things are still just as busy as ever... but i think something i've been realizing lately is that the hamline house has a story to tell. and people need to hear about it. last weekend we took a trip to YWAM in Weyerhaeuser WI to share about intentional community. it was pretty cool because it was the first time we've ever had a platform like that to tell our story. and it seemed to impact everyone who heard it... maybe not in a shocking visible way... but i believe that our story pushes people towards community... towards sharing & simplicity... and my hope is that our story would push people towards the heart of Jesus.

there are a lot of things that have happened since i last updated you all... some of you may know already, but about 2 months ago jamal moved out of the house. there are plenty of reasons why we arrived at this decision together, but the important thing is that our relationships were not damaged. this was the best thing for jamal, and for the others in the house.

on a happier note, this month we are preparing for two new additions to the house... greg & zach. greg is our friend from resonate who we've had several conversations with about moving in and what that would mean & look like and we all have agreed that the next step is for him to come try out a month & practice living with us. zach is our other friend who we actually haven't even met yet! ha... he's going to stay with us over thanksgiving weekend and we'll spend some time with him going over our house values & way of life... if that all goes well, we'll have a full house by january! we are all very excited to see what God does!

more updates to come soon!