Ukraine Resettlement Team 2022

Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?
Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe them,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

- Isaiah 58

Friends and Family,

As you may already know we are working with our church to adopt a Ukrainian family in the midst of the crisis that is happening over in Europe. We have great news: on December 1, 2022: we are formally forming a Ukrainian Resettlement Team!

Welcome to the need.

Since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine in February, as many as 14 million people have fled the country, while more than seven million are still thought to be displaced inside Ukraine itself. Poland has taken in the majority of the refugees and approximately 5.5 million children are in need of assistance as estimated by UNICEF. More than 6,114 civilian deaths have been confirmed. There has been no greater displacement of people in Europe since World War II.

What is the U.S. government’s involvement? 

The U.S. announced in April that it will welcome 100,000 Ukrainians through a new program called Uniting for Ukraine. This is a promise that the US government has made in standing with Ukraine to help families that have been displaced due to the invasion. Uniting for Ukraine gives an opportunity for Ukrainian citizens to come to the US for safety for a period of at least two years.

Ukrainians who participate in this program must have a sponsor in the U.S. who agrees to support them during their stay. Once approved, the family may apply for a proper work visa and seek asylum if they would like to pursue citizenship. To date, only 30,000 Ukrainian families have entered the US and have been resettled because of personal ties to families and friend sponsors. This leaves 70,000 who are without any U.S. ties.

This situation is heart-wrenching and a sober reminder that the United States is a country of immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers, and aliens who are not that different from these displaced Ukrainian families. Whether we come from a refugee background or not, the Church has been given a multitude of resources, talents, and human capital to mobilize and serve for such a time as this.

What have we done this past year?

This past year, our church (Trinity Presbyterian Church of Orange County) has had the privilege of resettling a Syrian family due to the Syrian refugee crisis. We were able to take in a family of 5: a mom, dad, and 3 daughters. We have been working closely with Home for Refugees, an organization that helps support families as they navigate their new lives in the US. Our pilot resettlement team helped this new family find a new home; get access to healthcare; placed in their first US job; established budgeting; enrolled them in English classes; enrolled their children in schools; showed them the ins and outs of community resources; and assisted with other needs that came up.

Our pilot team at Trinity committed to serving this one family for an entire year, and the hope is to continue in 2023 with a new team for a Ukrainian family. Once formed, this new team will serve in a similar capacity to the Syrian family.

We are called and qualified to serve this family.

Since the writing of this message, we have established a partnership with 4 family units in our congregation who will commit to being a part of the core resettlement team, as well as 8 supporting families who will come alongside to support the core. In order to be approved by the U.S. government to receive a Ukrainian family, we need a total of 5 core committed families in order to move forward. Please pray for one more family to commit.

This experience has been deeply valuable in training our congregation to not only take practical steps toward loving our neighbors but also to learn how to trust God in the midst of sharing in the burdens of those who are weakest and most vulnerable in our society – the foreigner. What does it actually mean for us to welcome them amidst our hectic schedules and brokenness? Is it to trust in the strength of our self-sufficiency or to rest in the strength of our God amidst our weakness? To love in this way is to embody the gospel. This is the way of Jesus.

Would you give financially to launch the Ukrainian resettlement team?

Through this partnership with Home for Refugees, we are hoping to help 1 of 100 Ukrainian families by the end of 2022, with the goal of resettlement by 2023.

Our goal is to raise $20,000 by December 31, 2022.

Our Financial Breakdown:

Home Teams resettling Ukrainians across the U.S. through Uniting for Ukraine Program fundraise $20,000.

$5,000 - HFR partnership costs. This helps cover the cost of training and coaching our core team for the year.

$15,000 - Family Start-Up Fund. This fund will help us with housing, arrival fees, health, transportation, education, and other unforeseen expenses.

Individual one-time donations.

• 1 person at $5000

• 2 people at $2500

• 4 people at $1000

• 6 people at $500

• 8 people at $250

• 10 people at $100

If would like to give to us online, please visit our website: https://trinitypresoc.churchcenter.com/giving/to/ukraine-resettlement-2022

Your donations are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law because Trinity Presbyterian Church of Orange County is a 501(c)(3) organization. Our EIN is: 26-2751593

Your partnership contributes to a lasting generational impact.

Our goal in this effort is not to provide a one-time experience, but rather for the long-term discipleship movement for the Church. Our church is here to make disciples in Christ. We see that this a process for not only bettering and serving our communities well, but also building up the next generation of missionaries, teachers, pastors, and workers that desire to be a part of bringing the kingdom of God on earth. Let us not only preach the word but let the word so fully embody it to impact the world in Jesus’ name.

Help us launch this resettlement team to help provide safety and love for a Ukrainian family for the next two years. Help us welcome this family to a new home.

Sincerely,

David & Reagan

Set a man on fire 💥

the snapshot

News:

Clark and David have been meeting and studying the Bible together almost every week for 7 months. It's amazing how God has been teaching and growing him!We have reached 75% of our monthly funding goal. Our goal is to hit 100% by August 31st.We want to hear an update from you and ways we can be praying for you!

Prayer Requests:

Please pray for David's continued Bible study times with Clark to be fruitful and encouraging for them both. Pray that the Lord adds more men to their group.Please pray for the Lord to provide more financial support partners. We still need to raise about $1,900 more/month.

support update

We are thankful that God is bringing more people to partner with us. We are currently receiving 75% of our financial goal each month. Our next goal is to reach 100% of our monthly giving by August 31st, 2019. This means we need an additional $1,900/month.

Like we have said before, we would love to have as many possible be a part of what we are doing, whether they can give 1 penny or $100.

If you have not yet joined our team of ministry partners, would you please pray and ask God if this is something He has for you?

If you would like to learn more about partnering with us, you can ask us or click the button below!

Learn More

the story: discipleship

As you know, the work of evangelizing the culture requires that we train an army of people. But to get an army, we don’t really need a lot of people. We just need one. One who is faithful, available, and teachable.

And when we do actually find one, our job is to simply fan their flame of zeal in the right direction: God’s. They become quite a spectacle to behold, especially when the Lord grabs ahold of them.

Just like how it takes a little bit of kindling to start a good fire, God does the same with people who are willing to lay down their lives as a living sacrifice. How exciting! This has certainly been the case with our friend Clark.

I (David) have had the great opportunity to mentor a man who has recently joined our church here at Trinity OC. Clark and Grace came into our lives about 8 months ago, when we were praying and asking the Lord to bring us someone we could get to know and invest in. Clark and Grace have been a good part of this journey.

Clark was quite inquisitive when we first met him. Brilliant and humble in his questioning of things and with a hunger that I hadn't had a chance to witness in a long time.

When Clark and I first started our Bible study, he was nervous, asking questions like, “How can you do this, David? I’m not not special, I’m just normal. How is that you and Reagan are able to throw everything away and live 100% for the Lord?”

My answer to him would often be, “I can’t. If it were not for God coming into my life and saving me and pushing me, I would not be able to do this. I wouldn’t choose this life for myself. I wouldn’t struggle to desire to be on mission for Him. It is all His doing.”

We have been studying the book of Proverbs, one chapter at a time, for the past 7 months, and our discussions range anywhere from 4 to 5 hours a session. Over these months together, I’ve discovered that the Lord is very much close to Clark, instructing him, whispering to him, convicting him. He’s been teaching Clark in secret. Every week that we’ve studied, shared, and come back again, Clark would have a new revelation.

This is something I witnessed during my time as a missionary in Bangkok as well. With very little initiative or teaching on my part, God chose and still chooses to call His people to Himself continually in His time. What a relief it is to be reminded that their salvation is not contingent upon our faithfulness, but His alone.

My work has been simply to point Clark to the Scriptures, revealing and confirming that what the Holy Spirit has been teaching him is indeed in the Bible and that Clark was indeed hearing from God Himself. It has been a great pleasure to see even my own flame of faith be reignited through this process and the confirmation of God’s Word appear in plain sight.

“Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.”  ― Terry Pratchett, Jingo

How About You?

We try to take some time each day to pray for our ministry partners, and we like knowing we are praying for specific, current things in their lives. Grandpa & Grandma, we would love to hear an update on your life and how we can pray for you. Talk to us!

It all started with a prayer and a cat

the snapshot:

News:

• The July 4th block party was a hit! Thanks for your prayers.

• God is slowly but surely answering our prayers for connection with our neighbors.

• We have reached 74% of our monthly funding goal.

• We want to hear an update from you and ways we can be praying for you!

Prayer Requests:

• Please pray that we will be faithful with the connections God has given us in our neighborhood. Pray for relationships to grow and bear fruit.

• Please pray for the Lord to provide more financial support partners. We still need to raise $1,975 more/month.

• Please pray for humility and wisdom as we figure out a good rhythm of managing projects for the ministry amongst the 3 buckets of compassion, mission, and HTBM.

the story:

Thanks to you all showing up with your prayers, bags of ice and chips, and willingness to make friends with strangers, the July 4th block party was a success!  In attendance were around 20 neighbors, 20 church friends, and a dog.  

While we are excited to share more about the conversations we got to have and the way God provided the perfect blend of people to both host and attend, we want to pull back and share some of the backstory of what God has been doing in our little slice of Anaheim, CA.  Sometimes, we get so caught up in sharing the grand and glorious moments that we are not faithful to share the little, day-to-day steps along the journey, the ways God has shown us His consistent faithfulness and attentiveness to our prayers, however small.    

So, here it goes…

It all started with a prayer and a cat.

David and I moved to Orange County back in September about two weeks after our wedding in Oklahoma City, OK and five months after we returned from life as missionaries in Thailand.

On coming back to the USA, we knew God was leading us to exemplify the same sort of lifestyle we lived in Thailand, sans the cold showers and mosquito spray applications multiple times a day.  Intentionally living out our faith and inviting others to do the same was God’s call for us here as much as it was on the other side of the world.
 

But it’s easy to slip out of that, right?  When we moved into David’s childhood home with his parents, saying hi to the neighbors of 25 years wasn’t natural or comfortable.  As time went on, the burden to do more than pull in and out of the driveway with little more than a wave (if that) to those who shared our stomping grounds grew… uncomfortable.  We were telling others in our Christian circles to “be missionary-ish” right where God had them: their homes, workplaces, families, wherever.  Were we doing that ourselves?

So we prayed for God to show us what to do.  Please open up a door, give us an opportunity to connect with someone.  Having dabbled in Rosaria Butterfield’s The Gospel Comes with a Housekey, a book about how neighborly hospitality draws people to Jesus, Reagan would occasionally take walks around the neighborhood, just to get the lay of the land, maybe say hi to someone, maybe make a friend, maybe talk about Jesus.  What else could we do?  Maybe we would start gardening out in the front yard?  Just be available?  Lord, would you please show us?

One day, a man showed up at our door.  His name was Pedro, he told us, and his little gray kitten was in our backyard, getting bullied by a larger cat.  Could we help him rescue his kitten?

We let him into the backyard and looked around, to no avail.  The kitten seemed to be gone, but what we did find was the time and space to actually talk to another human whose backyard adjoined ours.  

Pedro was a big, friendly, 40-something guy from Mexico.  He had a wife and three kids, he informed us, and we were welcome to come over anytime and take home a bag of the guavas that grew in his backyard.

We exchanged numbers with our new neighbor-friend and thanked Jesus when we walked back inside.  Certainly, on the scale of life changing events, this interaction would appear to anyone else as just a teensy speck.  But in the spiritual realm, something was forming, solidifying:  our confidence in the One who is always at work and who hears our prayers for help, and whom we knew would orchestrate something bigger and beyond what we could see at present.

(By the way, the kitten made it back home.  Pedro calls us every few weeks about it getting out again.  It's always fine.)

How About You?

We try to take some time each day to pray for our ministry partners, and we like knowing we are praying for specific, current things in their lives. We would love to hear an update on your life and how we can pray for you. Talk to us!

Money in the Bank 

We are thankful that God is bringing more people to partner with us. We are currently receiving 74% of our financial goal each month. Our next goal is to reach 100% of our monthly giving by August 31st, 2019. This means we need an additional $1,975/month.

Like we have said before, we would love to have as many possible be a part of what we are doing, whether they can give 1 penny or $100.

If you would like to learn more about partnering with us, you can ask us or click the button below!

How to Be Missionary-ish

Is there something God has put on your heart to do... but you're at a loss as to what that looks like? Is there something you've been praying about for awhile that seems like it's not being answered?

Discouragement in these kinds of ways trips us up all the time. It's tough to move forward in faith when you're stuck in the tension of the ambiguity. If you're up to share it with us, we would love to hear from you so we can encourage and pray with you.