Livin' Like Nomads

Not too long after we were married we bought a nice house and were planning on staying there for a long, long time.  We thought we would pay the house off early and then retire there so our bills would be really low!  Selling it and moving to Romania wasn't in our plan at all, but when God called us there we trusted that he was in control.  We had no idea what was in store for us as far as our future living situations.

One... help me count here... two... three... how many different places did we live while we were in Romania... four... five... we were there for five years... six... seven!

Now let's keep counting: one... how many places have we lived since being back from Romania... two... we've been back for almost six months... three... we've moved once a month so far in 2015... four... with more to come soon!

At this point we feel kind of like the gypsies (as pictured above) that we often saw passing through in Romania.  Not having a place to call our own has been one of the hardest parts of our transition next to missing the kids in Romania and being overwhelmed at the abundance and choices in America.  We have been very blessed by the people who have let us stay with them and are thankful that we have never had to worry about not having a place to live.  But the longing for having our own place has just kept getting stronger and stronger the longer we don't have our own stable housing.

God is good though and has been showing us glimpses of what he is working on for us.  A while ago we were meeting with our pastors at FairHaven Church and they mentioned that we should look into Westown Jubilee Housing.  This is a ministry that FairHaven is heavily involved with that buys fixer upper houses in the West Side of Grand Rapids and totally renovates them.  Their program helps people who otherwise might not be able to afford a house to buy a great, like new home.  This also helps bring stability and pride of ownership to a neighborhood which is suffering from a high percentage of rentals and poorly cared for houses.

Here is an example of the work that Westown Jubilee does.  They first buy a house that needs a lot of work.

They totally renovate the house making it very efficient in order to reduce cost of ownership as well.

The finished house might as well be a new house, and thanks to donations and volunteer work the houses are very affordable!

Here is an example of the inside work, the houses are typically gutted and redone from the studs up.

What an amazing transformation!  By God's grace we have started the homesteading process and are excited about the possibility of being able to move in to the neighborhood we will be ministering in. The process could take up to a year so we will rent a place from Westown Jubilee until then. 

There are many things we need prayer for as we go through this process, would you join us in lifting these up to our Father?

-for our final approval for homesteading with Westown Jubilee

-for God to provide an inexpensive house for the initial purchase

-for God to provide materials and volunteers to help rehab the house

-for God to provide an affordable rental for us until the house is done

-for continued patience, leading and guiding from God as we navigate through this process

Thanks for your support as we continue on this incredible journey!  We really appreciate your prayers and we know that God uses them to carry out his plan!

Children's Worship Launch!

God works in amazing ways.  Last year Gold Ave Church saw an increasing number of families with young kids at church.  The need for children to learn to experience God in an age appropriate setting and for the parents to be able to focus and participate more in the church service became apparent.  The church leadership decided to spend a few months praying for God's will and asked God to send people to help start this and other ministries to children and youth.

At the same time we were still in Romania preparing for our return home.  We were asking God to prepare us for a new ministry and were trusting that when we returned he would show us what that would be.  Only two weeks after stepping off the plane, through many "chance" meetings, we got to know the pastors of this church.  We felt God strongly leading us and answering our prayers and the prayers of the church!

For the past few months we planned for the launch of children's worship with a great team of people who are passionate about ministering to kids.  A week ago we were able to launch and praise God, it was awesome!

We started out with 15 kids in total and they all had a great time!  We learned about God through a lesson from the Jesus Storybook Bible.  This has great pictures and tells the whole story of the bible as God's story, and each chapter points toward Jesus. 

Everyone enjoyed singing songs with motions and having some freedom to have fun while praising God!

The last part is a special time of prayer journaling where the kids are encouraged to listen to what God is telling them through the Bible story.  We really want to raise these kids up as followers of Jesus who are able to listen to and follow God's voice.  We have a prayer time at the end where we encourage the kids to pray for one another.  This is where the biggest learning curve is for the kids.  We as leaders are modeling listening prayer and spoken prayer, would you pray that the kids catch on quickly?  Please pray that they stay excited and continue to enjoy deepening their relationship with God.

Praise God for his guiding hand in the process of launching this ministry, and ask that he continues to bless it.  We prayerfully look forward to many more ways that we can minister to the kids of the church and neighborhood.  Please continue to pray for God's leading.  Thanks for praying and for joining in what God is doing here!

Our New Ministry - God Clearly Leads!

Hello from Mark & Rebecca.  Last fall we returned from Romania after working there for five years with abandoned children & youth.  We would like to take this opportunity to let you know where God has been leading since.  Thank you for journeying with us so faithfully as we’ve poured God’s love into hundreds of kids in Romania—from babies to college students. Teaching English, Math, and Reading, leading youth groups and summer camps not only helped children break out of poverty, but were each vehicles for sharing our Father’s love. Each of the dozens of times that we saw one of our young people give their life to Jesus and be baptized into him was heartwarming and special!

Even as we felt called to transition back to the U.S. in order to build our family through adoption, we sensed God deepening our call to ministry.  Over our last year in Romania, we prayed fervently for God to lead us to a place where we would be able to use our gifts and experiences to serve the same types of young people—hurting, abandoned, and often hopeless. In faith, we resisted searching for the answer to our prayers while still in Romania.

Upon our return to America, God quickly began to answer our prayers in direct and amazing fashion—connecting us with two inner-city pastors who volunteered to pray us through our transition. As they listened to our sense of call, they were amazed to find that quite unexpectedly, we might be an answer to their own prayers. Their congregation had been praying for many months that God would send workers to serve the children and youth of the church and the neighborhood. God had already begun drawing neighborhood children to worship, even without any parents. These children were simply walking in on their own!  Through much prayer—on our own, with these pastors and with their church leadership—God gave us a strong sense that he was calling us to step into this ministry.

 

But it is a large step of faith! The church—Gold Avenue Christian Reformed (GAC)—isn’t financially self-sufficient and is unable to pay us. Instead, we have agreed to serve the church as Urban Missionaries who raise our own support. Beginning Feb. 1, Mark will join the staff of GAC as the Director of Children and Youth Ministries. Rebecca will assist and support this ministry and will later transition to being a stay-at-home mom after we adopt.

The opportunities at GAC and on the lower west side are exciting. Right now, there are a number of families with young children who call Gold Ave their church home.  Currently during Sunday morning services there is no age-appropriate worship or teaching for these children, so we’ve spent the last month praying and planning to begin a Children in Worship ministry.    

We are also hopeful that we’ll be able to serve the children of this economically and ethnically diverse neighborhood.  MANY kids come from broken families or single parent homes where they are often left unsupervised.  Children regularly come alone to the church looking for a safe and loving environment—but not only on Sunday mornings.  They also stop by throughout the week.

Right now, we’re praying about spaces we might make available for them through the week—a place to nurture them in the love of our Father, countering the lies that they are worthless and unwanted.  The stats say that as these kids grow older only about 50% of them will graduate from high school.  Many of them will join gangs and fall into a life of crime or welfare.  We believe that the gospel of Jesus Christ is the only thing that will change these stats, and all the pain that comes with them!

We would like to start after school tutoring programs like we did in Romania that will help these young people catch up and succeed in school.  We hope that through these and other youth programs many will experience and begin to follow Jesus Christ, and that through us, Jesus will bind up their broken hearts, lead them out of dark places, replace their despair with praise and transform them into righteous men and women. (Is. 61.1-3)  We have great hope for what the Lord will do as we pray and serve!

Opportunities to Partner

We are excited to ask you to continue to journey with us as we follow the Lord’s call on our lives. Would you please prayerfully consider making a monthly support commitment?  Your partnership will enable us to accomplish this important work.  One-time gifts are also welcome, as we must reach 70% of our required funding in order to transition from support-raising to ministry.  Tax-deductible donations should be made out to Gold Avenue Church and sent to: Gold Avenue Church, 49 Gold Avenue NW, Grand Rapids, MI 49504.  Please include a separate note designating the support for our ministry.  If you would like to set up a regular electronic funds transfer please let us know.

Additionally, we are looking for partners to:

Regularly intercede in prayer for us and our ministry

Participate in ministry to the children of the neighborhood

Donate needed goods for these ministries

We look forward to connecting with you to find out how God might be leading you to partner with us in this exciting new ministry.  Please share this letter with other individuals or churches that have a heart for kids and urban ministry.  Again, thank you for the love, support, and prayer that you have shown and continue to show us.

With love and prayer,

Mark & Rebecca Essenburg

Stay Connected! Blog: You're on it...  Email: weloveorphans @gmail.com  Phone: 616 498 9270  Facebook group, Quarterly Newsletter: Let us know.    

 P.S. We do have some immediate needs for which we are asking for donations. We would really appreciate some help obtaining these items!

First, we need some supplies for our Children's Worship which will begin this Sunday!

• Crayons, markers, paper, coloring books or activity books
• A child safety gate to block off a doorway, and a curtain rod/curtain to block off a larger one
• Tactile toys like blocks or little people sets

Also, we are working on creating a shared office with the other new guy at the church, Andrew. He is coming on board as another urban missionary who will be the director of community connections and outreach.  The office will be in a room at church that was formerly used for storage.  We are looking to transform it from this:

...to something like the picture below.  We want to create an inviting space in which we can efficiently accomplish our planning and where we can also have meetings.  Right now the only things that we have are the desk and the bookcase, so if you or someone you know is looking to donate something it would really help!  Here's what we are looking for:

• A comfy couch
• Two comfy sitting chairs, not too big
• A small table, could be an end table or coffee table
• A 3X4 whiteboard and whiteboard supplies
• Two filing cabinets (maybe)
• An office desk chair

A little trip to CA

At the end of January H2H celebrated its 20th anniversary of working in Romania.  We took the opportunity to use some air miles and spend a long weekend in San Diego, where H2H headquarters are located.  We stayed with our good friends, also former H2H staff, Steven and Haley.  

Enjoying blue skies at the ocean!

On Friday Haley had to work so we went on a nice trail with Steven.

The warm weather was a nice treat!

Current and former H2H staff and interns that were at the dinner.

We had fun catching up with some former team members at the dinner. It was also great to see the Romanian staff and be able to speak with them. So many people had questions about what we have been doing and how everything was going.

Saturday we went to Mission Basilica San Diego de Alcala. 

So beautiful!

Later in the day we spent some time with Talitha. She is a good friend that we have left behind in Romania. It was good to catch up and just hang out! Our fellow Michiganders also explored the town with us.

Sunday, after church at The Wave, we spent some time at the beach.  Krista and George (not pictured) also came to hang with us. Back to The Wave Church, besides having Steven on staff, another really cool thing they do sometimes is having a taco guy. For all us people who are unfortunate to not know what a taco guy is, well, basically some really awesome fresh tacos are made by the taco guy. And the best thing about real Mexican tacos, yeah, gluten free and amazing!

Tacos! (Not from the taco guy, but another time when we had yummy food)

Highlights of the trip: Great friends, amazing food, beautiful weather. It was a short but sweet trip that marked an end of a season. On February 1st, Mark officially started at Gold Ave Church! More about that and God's continued providence to follow!

Fall Update 2014

September marked the end of one of the most significant chapters in our lives so far: our ministry in Romania. With heavy hearts we said farewell to the kids that we had grown to know and love over the last five years.  We assured them that this would not be the end of our relationship, we will continue to hold them in our hearts and prayers and we will be back to visit hopefully in the near future. 

We were blessed to visit some old friends in Finland before we left Europe.  We had such a wonderful and rejuvenating time there and were sad to leave and say more farewells, but we were glad that after more than ten years we were able to reconnect and significantly deepen our relationship with them.

Once we returned home we began reconnecting with family and friends and trying to settle in and adjust to this “new” culture. We looked forward with eager anticipation of finding out what God was planning for us next.  We knew that He had given us the desire to build our own family through foster care adoption and the desire to continue in ministry.  We didn’t search for opportunities before we left Romania because we wanted to keep our focus on finishing well there and not neglecting our ministry because we were too focused on the future.  We decided that we would simply rely on God’s leading when we arrived home.

Two weeks after arriving I (Mark) participated in an outreach at a small inner-city church on west side of Grand Rapids called Gold Avenue CRC.  We had a very blessed time and at the end I briefly met one of the pastors.  The following week we attended a Dunamis prayer conference where both of the Gold Ave pastors were teachers.  They asked us to meet with them to share our sense of call to ministry and what we had been doing in Romania.  The following week we met with them again and they shared that as a church they had been praying for God to send workers to help them start ministries to the growing number of children there and in the neighborhood.  We prayed together and for a few weeks spent much time in prayer asking God if this was the path He was calling us to.  We all strongly felt that yes, God is leading us to step into ministry there.

Because this is a small urban church, we will be urban missionaries serving there with a focus of reaching the hurting children and families of the neighborhood.  God is already moving there and we are excited to be a part of it.  Once we have more details worked out we will begin raising needed support, would you please prayerfully consider partnering with us in this ministry?  We have been so blessed by your financial and prayer support while ministering in Romania and we look forward to continued and new partnerships going forward.  We would also like to eventually move in to that neighborhood, would you please pray for God to lead and provide? Please continue to pray for God to clearly lead us and the church as we partner together to further God’s kingdom.  Praise God for his leading and providence!

 God Provides!

Before we left Romania we needed to sell our car. We were planning on using the money to buy one when we arrived home in Michigan.  After a while of having no success we felt God leading us to sell our car to another organization for less than half the price. After some initial uneasiness we decided to give it to God and trust that he would provide for us when our time of need came.

One week after arriving home we found a car we liked on Craigslist. Through talking with the seller we found out that they were members of our church which lead them to reduce the price for us. We also recieved a donation which exactly covered the difference in price between our car in Romania and this car. We are so blessed and thankful to God that he is faithful and that he is our loving provider!

Click on the picture below and you will be able to download and print off this update!

Our Journey Continues

What have we been doing since our last post?  We have been watching our journey back to the mission field slowly unfold.  So many of us think the mission field is out there, over there, or far away, but it is right here in front of us!  The church has been given the responsibility of taking care of the people around it and reaching out to those who need the good news, not just far away, but right next door.  This morning when I was reading James 2 I was again reminded of how we need to act and not just wish people well.  

James 2:15-16 Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food.  If one of you says to them, "Go in peace; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it?

Griffins Game with the Amandas

God has lead us to a church that is seeking to follow Him and really be His church.  There is a great need there for workers/volunteers/planters/harvesters.  When I think about the opportunities there, the vision, and what is happening and could happen in that church there is excitement and the possibilities are endless.

And we can see that God you're moving

A time of Jubilee is coming

When young and old will turn to Jesus

Fling wide your heavenly gates

Prepare the way of the risen Lord!

(Did you feel the mountains tremble written by Martin James Smith)

Hanging out with a couple cute girls!

We will have more details hopefully soon of our exact position and details of how it is all going to work. (We are still in the process of trying to figure out how God is leading.) This much we do know, that at least to start we will be involved in establishing children's worship there.  We not only see the need, but know that kids have a openness to the gospel and can impact families and the entire community. Please join us in prayer for continued faith and obedience for where God is leading.  Pray for funding, housing closer to the church, and community there.  Pray also for the hearts of the kids we will impact and continued prayers for the kids we have worked with in the past.  We know the importance of prayer and perseverance and we are thankful for all of you who are faithful in lifting us up in prayer!

The Melting Pot with good friends

Step by Step

We miss our kids back in Romania but at the same time we have been blessed by reconnecting with our friends and family here at home.  It has been great to be able to do this at a slower pace than when were were only home for one month each year.

 Another new thing is that Rebecca has been trying out many new gluten free recipes.

Here are some doughnut holes and apple cider.

Japanese milk bread

Macarons

Dinner rolls

We have been enjoying the nice fall here and had a visit from some deer in the yard.

The colors this fall were spectacular, in Romania we missed all the maples (also the syrup).

We know that God has brought us back here to start our family through foster care adoption.  There are many steps that we need to take in order to get there and that is what we have been trying to figure out lately.  I have felt God calling me to stay in ministry and have been trying to figure out what that will look like.  God has been guiding us to meet new people at an urban church in downtown Grand Rapids through an outreach and then a Dunamis prayer conference.  We are now talking with the pastors there about the possibility of building up a children's ministry.  We are praying and ask for your prayers that God would clearly lead us and all those involved and that he will open the right doors for us.  There is so much to figure out but we know that it is all in God's hands and that where he guides he provides.