Last night had to be one of the biggest highlights of Missio Lux for me.
It was our annual Missio Lux Missio Community Huddle White
Elephant Party to celebrate Christmas, but this was a party with a missio!
After we had eaten lots of good food and finished our white elephant gift exchange, we loaded in our cars and drove to Fall City so we could celebrate with Dan and Sally and their friends who had just finished with their first Fall City dinner at the food bank, thus birthing a new missio community: 5 Loaves!
This is the story of Dan and Sally and their dream to have a missio community in their city.
Fall City is about 15 minutes east of Sammamish, where many from Missio Lux live. It's a rather quaint rural town that is by a river which often floods in heavy rain seasons. Sally who has a major gift of hospitality had a dream for a long time for her town to be connected in relationship and also so that if a crisis hits, such as a bad flood, the town could band together and work through the challenge.
She began to go and help at the food bank about a year ago. Eventually she was asked to be on the food bank board, and was given the role of doing the newsletter.
This fall, Dan and Sally, recognizing that many of their neighbors didn't know one another began to hold Thursday Soup Night. Every Thursday they open their home for a dinner of soup and bread to whomever wants to come. Neighbors began to befriend one another and community began to build.
One of our recommendations for Missio Lux is to have a vision partner.
A vision partner is someone that has the same heart and will walk together to help envision and birth a missio. Dan and Sally had each other and their two teenage children, but they didn't have another vision partner.
God is so great. He connected them to a woman that loves to cook and wanted to cook meals for people in Fall City. When Sally told her about Missio Lux, she began to cry and said that she had literally been praying for a church like this. A vision partner with the same heart, and a great compliment to Sally's amazing gift of hospitality.
Now Dan and Sally knew that it was time to move forward. They organized a dinner, invited some friends from Missio Lux, some friends from the neighborhood and a woman brought her Bible Study to help serve the first meal at the food bank.
It was wonderful to walk into Dan and Sally's home and see it bursting with Missio Lux friends who came to help celebrate the new birth. It made me smile to see the roomful of different ages and the ease at which people were connecting. It was a gift to pray for 5 Loaves and to envision what could be in the future.
This is the way it is supposed to happen....starting with a dream, filled with prayer, waiting on God's timing and open doors, discovering a vision partner, and then moving forward in God's love and power.
I dream of a day when Missio Lux will have a story like this to tell every day....as the world is filled with missios who are living out the dream God planted within them!
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