Arrived!

1/7/2025

This past week my mom and I drove out from Kansas to Southern California (or "SoCal" as it seems to be referred to by locals). We made the trip in two days, and arrived Friday, January 3rd, with a long, but smooth, trip. Friday afternoon we rolled into Fullerton CA where I am living for the year and met the guys at the house I'm living in. *[A point of clarification: My time in California extends two months past the end of the official apprenticeship and consists of additional time for reflection and planning as the program comes to completion. The program is ten months, but my time in California is opened to twelve as my rent is set up to cover the year and not leave an odd two months to be filled. This also allows for a time to look back on the program and look forward to the future steps and applications.] The two older men in the house with me are pastors at local Friends churches and are focused on helping cultivate my growth and formation both within the church, as well as in the home. Their names are Max and Paul. Max attends Friends Church Fullerton and is their Executive Pastor currently. Along with that, he also does bike repair and tech work as part-time work. Paul is a youth minister at Rose Drive Friends Church and does data entry for a healthcare company as part-time work. From what I have heard and see, most SoCal residents work multiple jobs and need multiple incomes to support living here as cost of living is high.

I am working primarily with Friends Church Fullerton this year and will be finding the areas that I can join them in their ministry and learn from the work they do. This week I will be joining their young adult's small group as they begin working through John Mark Comer's book Practicing the Way. As a church body, we have just begun working through Core 52, by Mark Moore, which is a year-long devotional meant to increase overall Bible literacy as you focus on key points in the Bible narrative and memorize an emphasized verse each week.

This week I will continue my orientation with the area as well as the ministries that I will be serving with and learning from. I am scheduled to engage with a couple Bible-Dialogue meetings this week and will begin learning this method of engaging people in the Gospels via question-based dialogue. I hope to keep this page relatively updated with pictures and videos of what I'm doing, as well as written updates, but I'm also still working to figure out the most beneficial ways of communicating updates. ***