Thank you Kaleo Church family for your joyful service throughout the week of Serve the City 2023! It was an awesome week. We had the opportunity to provide a free basketball camp to nearly 300 kids in our city with an average of 230 kids attending each day. We loved and enjoyed the kids and their families and shared the gospel with them every day. It was a huge encouragement to see the church on mission to our city. We continue to pray that the gospel would go forth in our city and that the gospel seeds that were planted in these young hearts would take root and grow into salvation.
Kaleo Church has been running this basketball camp for 10 years now, and we sent more volunteers to Serve the City 2023 than we ever have! It was beautiful to see our church family so committed to this mission. However, we were not alone. The joy of serving was shared and increased because we had the opportunity to serve alongside other churches and brothers/sisters in Christ including - Center City Church, Pine Valley Community Church, and the Naval Academy BCM. It was encouraging to witness Christ bringing so many of his followers together to spread his gospel message to the people of our community! We had so many volunteers step up to serve - to plan and prepare, to work extra hours behind the scenes, to bear the heat of the day on black asphalt (and to give praise to Jesus that this year was not as hot as many years have been!), to stay late cleaning up, to take care of all the many logistics and grocery runs, to serve families with kids from toddlers all the way through high school age, and to simply be intentional to engage in gospel conversations. We had brothers and sisters dedicate time prepping to share the gospel with kids and to share their stories with our church family - each being intentional in how they might best point others to the good news of Jesus Christ. So many people using their unique gifts to love and serve and see the gospel proclaimed! We ate together, prayed together, praised together and played together!!! What a beautiful picture of the family of God treasuring Christ together. We pray that the Holy Spirit would use this week to be a launching pad to Kaleo Church living this out throughout the next year until we have the privilege by God's grace to participate in Serve the City 2024!
No matter how many times we do Serve the City it never ceases to be encouraging because it is a beautiful example of the church simply being the church, living out our identity as servant missionaries who love Jesus and one another. Yes, Serve the City magnifies this in our sight because it is such an intense week, but this is the identity our church always strives to live out. Of course, we are not perfect, but Serve the City was enheartening because I know for us this isn’t just once a year. This is who we are! This is the family of God that we get to be a part of every day of the year! What a privilege to live this life with you all - transformed by grace and empowered by the Holy Spirit. So, I believe I also speak on behalf of Tim and Wes when I say, “Thank you Kaleo Church! We love you! We are so thankful to call you our brothers and sisters in Christ. What a joy to live this Christian life together as a Christ treasuring family formed by the gospel and sent on mission!”
“By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
-John 13:35
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