Survey Day 1

Today we began a big step in getting to know the community that we live in.  We started going house to house with a small survey that asks what people feel the greatest need this community has and if the church is meeting this need.  

One of our goals with this survey is to identify persons of peace - those who are open to share with us and sensitive to the gospel.  Today we met two people who meet this goal.  Alva just recently moved to Chester from Puerto Rico.  Already she has identified needs in this community.  She also loves God and is seeking a place to worship.  We were able to direct her to a hispanic church that a friend of ours attends.  Shortly she will be moving down the street from us.  She has a sweet personality and we look forward to check in with her again soon.

Bonnie’s daughter comes by our house often to do crafts and play games with her friends.  Today we met Bonnie for the first time.  When we asked her what the community’s greatest need was she started speaking in Spanish and broken English about how she is trying to get the city to build playgrounds for the neighborhood kids.  Her daughter helped translate as we continued with the survey.  Afterwards, we shared with her that we will inviting her family to a barbecue at our house in a few weeks, she then invited us to her son’s birthday party, which we hope to attend before we leave to go to Virginia.

Another goal of our survey is to better know the cultural make-up of our community.  Over the years we have seen the hispanic population growing .  Of the 10 houses we stopped by today, 6 were hispanic. 

We look forward to continuing this survey, which will probably take a good part of the summer.  Our prayer is that God will continue to open our eyes to the needs and the people of Highland Gardens.