What's Up at WillowBridge?

Over the past few weeks, I've had a few people ask me if we are considered missionaries - meaning they want to know if we have to raise our own financial support and if we write monthly newsletters to a crew of people who have agreed to support us.

We don't have to raise our own support, and we don't have a newsletter mailing list, but I thought it might be a good idea to write one post a month that sort of serves that newsletter purpose. Even though those of you who read here daily will probably generally know what's going on in our work life, via random stories, this might help you better know what we're working through and how you can pray!

OH! And since I already have so many regularly scheduled posts that fall at the end of the month, I decided to do this one on the second Wednesday of each month - just to make sure the end of the month schedule can breathe a little! So here is a glimpse of What's Up at WillowBridge!

What's Happening Around WillowBridge?

* We haven't been in our full-time daily role here at the building for a full month yet, so one of the biggest happenings involves just figuring out what needs to be done and what kind of schedule to keep to make things run smoothly. It's a learning curve, for sure, so we'll have much more of this taking place in the weeks to come. The building is fairly new, so it doesn't have major issues or renovations that need to take place, but every building needs regular care and maintenance. Ryan is working on learning the needs that exist and making lists so that he and Tim (our co-worker) can take care of everything well. This place belongs to the Lord, and we're just the stewards!

* In addition to that, we've devoted a lot of our time to getting to know our tenants. Each of them has a unique personality (just like anywhere else in life) and a specific set of gifts and needs. We've been spending time talking to them, trying to learn how to best support them, and what sorts of things are important to them in life. We'll continue to do more of this in the weeks to come, too!

* While Ryan is brainstorming about the building, I've been doing the same thing in the office! I'm learning the administrative tasks and making lists of things that would be great to implement as we have time. (Case in point - I realized during our tornado warning this week that most of our tenants don't know what you should take with you to the shelter in the event of a storm. You know what? Until the tornado that took my sister's house, neither did I! Not really. Not the important stuff. So that's one of my near-future goals: to work on making lists of things to grab quickly in the event of an emergency.)

* Since the building is so new, the majority of the time has been devoted to making sure it has everything it needs to run smoothly, day-to-day. But no one has really decorated too much yet - so the place is a bit of a blank slate. Last weekend, I decorated the entryway, using some extra pieces that didn't really fit in our apartment. We've gotten a lot of positive feedback on the presence of a little life in the entry! It just makes it cozy and homey, and we are looking forward to doing a little bit more of that in the shared community spaces!

* We are also working on creating some social media pages just for WillowBridge. Currently we're an extra part of Gateway Woods' pages, but we are working on finding out what we need to know to have some pages specifically for our work - so those of you who love social media can follow us there and stay in the loop on what God is doing here!

How Can You Pray?

* We would welcome your prayers for us as we continue to learn as quickly as we can. Ryan and I are our own worst critics and put a lot of pressure on ourselves to learn as much as we can as fast as we can. We want to do well and minimize silly questions and mistakes, so we need every bit of strength and grace from the Lord!! Every single day brings something new for us to learn!

* We would also welcome your prayers for our work team as we continue to figure out our working relationships and friendships with each other. We are so grateful that the Lord provided co-workers who are not just great and helpful workers, but they're really fun to be with. We love our new friendships with them! We want those relationships to continue to grow and strengthen!

* We pray daily for our tenants - and even though you don't know their names, we invite you to pray with us for them! We have really loved getting to know them and seeing what God is doing in each one of them. And we are also praying that God will show us the best ways to interact with them and help them.

* We are also praying for a few more volunteers to help - especially with transportation. We don't transport tenants everywhere they go (they are responsible for finding some of their own rides) but currently, none of them have cars, so we do a lot of driving around here. Because we don't have a full house right now, it's manageable, but as we increase in tenant number, it will become challenging to juggle rides, we know. But we're praying for God to begin lining up those answers to prayer even now, so we'll be ready when we need them!