My Girl…

My sweet girl, Rebekah, came home for Christmas yesterday. She has been serving a one-year internship at the Dream Center in Los Angeles, California. We are so happy to have Rebekah home for the next two weeks. She has been so busy there and I have been so busy with Orphan Hope that we haven’t had much time to talk while she has been gone so I made her sit down last night and catch me up on all of the details.

The Dream Center (www.dreamcenter.org) is an inner-city ministry in downtown Los Angeles that ministers to  more than 35,000 people each week in the Center’s 40 services and 273 ministries and outreaches. The Dream Center is an amazing example of how the church should be impacting the world. In the first four years of the Dream Center’s establishment, prostitution and gang violence dropped 73%, the homicide rate dropped 28% and rape dropped 53%. The Mayor of Los Angeles and the City Council have publicly acknowledged the dramatic impact of the Dream Center and praised its efforts. In 2000, President Bush, then Governor of Texas, visited the Dream Center and deemed it “a model for faith-based organizations.”

I was so amazed and blessed to hear about what God is doing for and through our little girl in L.A. I really enjoyed her regaling us with her weekly schedule. On Mondays Rebekah helps count the offering from the church and then does an after school program with elementary, middle, and high school kids from the Echo Park area around the Dream Center. On Tuesdays she and her team deliver furniture and other things to needy families and then she helps in youth church on Tuesday nights. On Wednesdays she does office work for the Adopt A Block program and deliveries to needy families in the afternoon and then her after school program. On Thursdays she works in the office and then takes the bus out to her Adopt A Block site to pick up people for church. On Friday mornings they separate all of the donations that have come in during the week and bag them up for their site visits the next day. She does her after school program again and then on Friday nights they go to Skid Row and minister to the homeless there. She sometimes go with the prostitute ministry on Friday nights after Skid Row and witnesses to and prays for the working girls in South Central.

Saturday is a big day for Rebekah. Her main job at the Dream Center is in the Adopt A Block ministry. As I said above, the Dream Center has over 200 outreach programs and Adopt A Block is their signature program. There are 15 neighborhoods (sites) where they go on Saturdays and minister to the people there. Rebekah is the site leader for Nickerson Gardens in Watts. Nickerson Gardens is a 1,050 unit apartment project and is the largest public housing project west of the Mississippi River. It was the birthplace of the Bounty Hunter Bloods gang and one of the sites of the famous Watts riots in the 60’s. I was pretty amazed that my little girl is the leader of the team for this housing project. Every Saturday she and her team of 30 deliver donations to needy families, go door to door and pray with people, meet needs of various kinds and share the love of Christ. They have been known to help children with homework, take out trash, wash dishes, and all kinds of things to build relationships and thereby share Christ.

On Sundays Rebekah and her team take a 60 passenger bus out to Nickerson Gardens and pick up people for church. The church, pastored by Matthew Barnett, founder of the Dream Center, is Angelus Temple and is a few blocks from the 8 story Dream Center building. Rebekah and her 50-60 people that she brings from her “site” join with thousands of others at the church on Sundays to worship the Lord. Sunday afternoons she usually joins up with a group that loves to hike in the nearby mountains around Los Angeles. Monday her schedule starts all over again. She loves every minute of it and is blessed to be there and we are so proud and grateful for this opportunity that God has graciously given her.