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Los Angeles
This month we're heading on over to Los Angeles!
Be sure to visit our opportunities page for
more information about serving with us in the "City of Angels".
News from the Los Angeles City Director
Many of you are in the exciting stage of preparing for your summer
missions trip with CSM. Others of you have been with CSM and are looking to see how
God is moving in your community or in other places you may be going on a mission trip.
Here at CSM-LA we have been living an exciting
adventure, a renewed call to our life of
mission, at our new housing site in South Los Angeles.
Some of the only places that the poorest of the poor in Los Angeles can
afford to live are here in the often overlooked neighborhoods of South Los Angeles. Since
we moved in 5 months ago, I have met a homeless couple who lives off what they can find to
recycle. Our interns have befriended a woman who works at the liquor store on the corner
and knows more about the gang activity of the neighborhood than you think an eighteen-year-old
should know. We have also met a pastor who is reaching out to those living in the government
projects nearby. Another pastor in our area makes meals every morning for the elderly poor.
Unless you move in to where the poor are living, you will not see their great
needs. Many of you will have that opportunity this summer to move in, if even for a week, and
see the needs of a new community. For those of you who are staying home and those of you who
are setting out, I have a few words of encouragement from the Gospel of John. Just as Jesus
traveled into Samaria to meet a woman in great need, he is meeting each of us and those we would
serve, just where we are at.
Read John 4 to see how Jesus takes his disciples into a part of the country
that they would just rather avoid. They are freaked out by him even taking them there. As John
Perkins points out in his revolutionary book, With Justice for All, “Jesus deliberately went
through Samaria for one reason—He wanted to personally touch the lives of the people there.” (p.
53) Even though some of you may be freaked out about where you are going, Jesus wants to use the
experience to show you something new, something you weren’t expecting to see.
When Jesus made the deliberate stop in Samaria, he realized something – he was
really thirsty. Even though the woman who met him at the well needed much more from Jesus, he
started by asking her for help, a drink of water. When we go into a new place, we have a lot of
needs that those living in the community can help us with: fitting in, local conveniences,
spiritual encouragement.
Discover where God is leading you to serve this summer, even if it is in a
difficult place for you to go. He will show you your own needs; he will break down your ideas of
a place. He will use you to bless others. At the end of their amazing detour into Samaria, Jesus
says, “Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, and then comes the harvest’? Behold, I say, lift
up your eyes and look onto the fields they are white for harvest.” If they had never taken that
trip to Samaria, they could have never seen through Jesus’ eyes the great need.
For further encouragement and preparation consider the following books:
-Rachel Hamilton, CSM Los Angeles City
Director
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