Mosaic's Beginnings

Some of you have been asking about the church plant Page and I are doing in mid-city. We wanted to give you some pictures of what a church plant looks like at the very beginning stages. Page and I, and a few other prayer warriors, have been praying for over a year and a half (before Page left for Iraq) about planting a church in the mid-city section of New Orleans. This area was populated with over 40,000 people before Katrina, but is now down to 27,000 people of a number of different nationalities. The top three races are white, black, and hispanic. This area has few evangelical churches and no evangelical multi-ethnic and multi-racial churches. As I have mentioned before, the Lord has placed this area of town on our hearts and has led us to have a heart of seeing worship here on this earth as it will be in heaven (every nation, tribe, and tongue worshiping together as one body).

When I began looking for a home, we strategically looked in the mid-city area. I cannot go into all the details here, but God worked a number of miracles when He brought us to the home we are living in now. We see this house as ministry tool of the Lord that truly blesses us as well. I literally wake up every morning and thank the Lord for my home. We love our home and the area we live in very much.

We have now met as Mosaic church 3 times. Each time we have come together for a meal, worship, and communion. God has blessed us with a very talented black man to lead us in worship. He and his Haitian wife have already been blessing to both Page and I during this process. They have a very sweet spirit and a desire to see lives changed in this area. We are in the process of working out another gifted black man to be on our leadership team. He and his wife are also very precious and have hearts for our community. Our services so far have included people who are Haitian, Nigerian, Cajun, Black, White, Chinese, and of Mixed Race. I mention all the races to let you know what God is doing across racial lines.

We know that because racism is a problem that is all the way down in the roots of this city and a stronghold satan would like to keep this city bound with, this type of work is only going to be done through the power of the Almighty God. We are praying even now that we would be able to stand firm against the attacks that satan will begin to launch. We are posting all this information on our blog so that you will begin to pray for this work that ONLY GOD CAN DO. We cannot do this alone and we need your prayers. Thank you so much in advance for bringing our family before our Father in prayer. Thank you for praying for our friends and neighbors that they would be drawn to what God is doing. Thank you for praying that this precious core group that God is building would be strong and courageous.

Page took pictures from 3 different angles to get everyone in the pictures. I (Ashley) am in the kitchen cleaning up a little before our service began. For those of you who are wondering, our house is a double shotgun house. The living room is up front. The hallway you see leads to the dining room and kitchen. The white doors you see off the living room and hallway are the bedrooms.

Funny Stories

I know I keep apologizing each time I get on here for not posting more often. I do apologize to the friends and family members who want to keep up with us. Granparents and Great Granparents....these stories are for you!

Karis is finally completely diaper free. For over a year she has been wearing diapers just for naps and night time sleep. For about 3 or 4 months now she has been off diapers for naps. About a week ago I just decided to quit putting a diaper on her at night. She had one or two accidents early on, but they were both my fault because I forgot to wake her to go potty before I fell asleep. About 3 or 4 nights ago, she started waking herself up to go to the bathroom. She gets up around 3am every morning, walks to the potty, turns on the light and goes all by herself. She has not had an accident in over a week. Whoo!! Finally!!

We have not started the "for real" potty training with Thia yet because she is afraid of the toilet. She will refuse to bend her legs to sit on the potty unless Page or I is holding her waist and then she just looks and us and says, "No pook!" which is what she calls both of her toiletry jobs.

Our funny story with Karis was that about 4 weeks ago, the entire family were taking naps. I wake up to hear this weird banging noise coming from somewhere in the house. It took me a while to realize that it is coming from the girls room. You need to know that even though the girls share a room at night, we still separate them for their naps otherwise they would never go to sleep. Karis sleeps in her bed in their room. So once I realized the noise was coming from their room, I opened the door to find Karis standing by her bed completely naked. She has poop caked on her hands, kleenex covered in poop all over her bed and the floor, and poop stains on blankets, sheets, and a book or two. My immediate reaction was shock because she had never been the child to want to get dirty. So I said, "Oh Karis!" She looked at me with this helpless look on her face and said, "Mom, I tried to change my diaper for you so you wouldn't have to change my poopy diaper!" Of course, I couldn't be MAD at that explanation. She was trying to "help". So I picked her up and took her to the bathroom. I had her shake her hands off over the toilet to get the clumps off her hands, but she didn't really understand that concept, so she started trying to manually work the poop off like you would dough off your fingers when making biscuit. I immediately stopped that and just put her in the tub. As I was hosing her off, she looked at me and said, "Mom, I thought to myself...'This was not a good idea!'" At that announcement, I busted out laughing. It was amazing how laughing together about the situation actually made the cleanup less tedious. I did make Page clean up the bedroom, however. I figured he had missed a year of such messes, he needed the clean up experience and I wanted him to be able to tell the story first hand rather than tell about how I handled the situation. I was only thinking of him! ;-)

Alethia has completely come out of her shell. Those of you that know her will know that she has never really been in a shell to begin with, but she knows no stranger or insecurity of any form. She has rhythm in her blood and has moves that cannot be taught, nor would I want to teach them to a 2 year old. For example, both my girls love the old song "Rockin Robin" because they enjoy dancing to it. We sometimes have family dance time in the kitchen while I am cooking to keep the girls entertained. Page and I were watching the girls dance to this song for what was probably the 3rd time when Thia just took off with her dancing self. She started shaking her hips, bopping her shoulders, and cocking her head. The funniest part to us was that she placed her hands on the counter and begin to rock her hips back and forth while going all the way down to the floor and back up. Seeing as how we do not watch anything on tv but, Veggie Tales, Dora, Madeline and Diego, and realizing that Page and I could never dance like that even if we wanted to, we wondered where she was learning her moves. We still don't know. I think we need to work on appropriate and inappropriate dancing with our 2 year old. Never thought I would be saying THAT!

Anyway, hope you enjoy the update and that the stories make you laugh a little!