Eshleman
Why We're Doing Mission Year
Renae and I have been married almost 2 years now. We’re loving life together. Currently, I lead worship (as a musician) in several contexts and Renae works for a social services agency. We love to be active outdoors, play hard, and be together. We also have some great friends here in Indiana that we are so thankful and going to miss when we move to Atlanta. Our families reside in Pennsylvania (Rusty’s) and Ohio (Renae’s). We are doing MY for several reasons. First, we want to learn more about/explore/express God’s heart for those in poverty. We believe that the Bible is pretty clear about caring for those in need, and while “need” may have many different faces, poverty is a familiar one. While our current context, Huntington IN, is not without poverty, MY will put us in a context where we are confronted with poverty on a daily basis and where we learn together with the experienced and unexperienced alike how we can become the hands and feet of Jesus. Second, we want to unite our hearts in a similar path or direction. MY will provide an environment where we are sharing many experiences, i.e. relationships, learning environments, service, etc. Finally, we do not want to be 50 and looking back saying, “What if we had just taken a year and lived in the city, loved God, and loved people?” We don’t want to be that couple. God has awakened in us an awareness of the needs in the city and the needs in our lives to experience them along with others in community. We’ll do our best to keep you updated. Keep checking here to share in our experiences.
About Mission Year
Mission Year is a year long urban ministry program focused on Christian service and discipleship. We take teams of young people, place them in an area of need, and help them to serve people and create community. We are committed to the command of Jesus to “love God and love people,” by placing the needs of our neighbors first and developing committed disciples of Christ with a heart for the poor. Learn more about our first year program…
Eshleman's Blog
Service Site #1 / Sep 26, 12:35 PM
This morning Renae and I met Allison Smith, Volunteer Coordinator at Cafe 458, a service to homeless men and women. During the week it serves scrumptious hot meals to folks enrolled in their program and on the weekends it is a volunteer driven restaurant open to the public. For more info go to www.samhouse.org and follow the links for Cafe 458.
It looks like I’ll be helping there most Mons, Tues, & Thurs mornings, cooking, serving, and connecting with the clients. We have a meeting with some ladies who run and afterschool program in our neighborhood (Vine City). Hopefully, Renae and I will be able to help out their during the afternoons Mon-Thurs. Renae is headed to Central Outreach Center on Monday to observe the ministry to the homeless.
It’s very exciting watching these site-placements work out. After a few slow days it’s nice to have a bit of a plan in place. Thanks for your prayers as we’re on our search.
Last evening we ate dinner with a new friend named Nasrah. She lives down the street and is very active in the community. She gave us some great tips for earning trust with our neighbors and straight-up asked us what we are doing here in the neighborhood. She welcomed us and told all kinds of stories including how a tornado went through our neighborhood just this past March. Apparently there is still damage that needs repaired and several service agencies are pulling out. Pray that we might be able to meet the needs of individuals and children still making it through this process.
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Thoughts of Renae / Sep 18, 01:20 PM
We have been learning a lot through orientations and trainings these past several weeks, including topics on being good neighbors, racism, the history of Atlanta, and community living. We spent a week camping at a place out in the country called God’s Farm. It was ironic that I felt at home there waking up to roosters crowing, but that time was set aside to prepare us for living in the city. Hence the title of our September newsletter…When country mice move to the city :)
A new place becoming home:
We have already begun formulating friendships in our neighborhood and calling people by name as we pass along the sidewalk. The other day Rusty hollered down the sidewalk to a man we had previously met named Emmanuel who simply turned around and yelled back in jolly manner, “Hey neighbors!” Others in our house have been greeted the same way after getting off the bus toward our street.
First Congregational Church:
This will be our home church for the year. Mission Year encourages us to be involved in one church activity as a way to be involved and build relationships. Our second Sunday we attended the annual church “picnic” which far exceeded our ideas of a Southern barbecue! Our church is currently meeting in a building that belongs to Morris Brown College as the original 100+ year old church/historic building located downtown is being restored. I learned that one of the reasons church history is so important to the African American culture is that many of them don’t know much of their genealogical history, but they do know the history of their church and celebrate that!
Rusty participated in a hand bell rehearsal at church the other night, and at the end of rehearsal everyone gave him a hand and one lady hollered out, “Yeah, you’re representin’!”
Living in Community:
It is interesting living with other couples. We have enjoyed getting to know one another, exploring our neighborhood, and playing games together. It is certainly difficult at times to make decisions with six people opposed to only two (like what to purchase on your first grocery shopping excursion)! I am challenged to accept others’ thoughts and opinions that are different from my own and then continually choose to love them in the midst of our differences. I feel like one of the most difficult things this year could be choosing to deeply love one another—choosing to be an intentional community that challenges, encourages and spurs one another on—rather than settle for being roommates who function semi-well together. What a wonderful example God has given us with the three in one—constant intimate community.
Please pray for us as we will soon be choosing our service sites and begin working at these places within the next couple weeks. Also please pray that we will deeply love our team and our neighborhood.
Welcome to Atlanta / Sep 18, 01:20 PM
From Rusty:
This is a rather long entry. My apologies for that, and I’ll try to keep them shorter in the future. You can check here weekly to see if we’ve updated our blog. We do not have internet access at our home, but we’ll do our best to not leave huge gaps of silence.
Formulating all my thoughts, feelings, and reflections into coherent and concise paragraphs seems an overwhelming task at this point. Over the past two weeks I have ingested so much from speakers and training sessions that my brain is overloaded.
Last week all 95 MY participants were at God’s Farm, a huge plot of land owned by Larry Teems and his family. The Teems open up their farm (full with a pavilion, cabins, and meeting tent) to groups for retreat from the city and the business of life. There, we heard from men & women who are very passionate about following Jesus and loving “the least of these.” From university professors to after school program directors, to missionaries, and storytellers, these folks brought their A-game to help equip us for ministering in urban contexts.
Here is my attempt to share my reflections from the past few weeks:
White:
I am much more aware of my race than I have ever been. From elementary school to college I can probably count on 2 hands the number of people of color I talked to on occasion and on 1 hand the number I new personally. Atlanta’s population offers an array of colors, but the majority of people are black or African American. For once in my life, I am a minority. I will never know what it feels like to be a person of color; my white skin prevents me from experiencing the racial profiling and bigotry that some of my new friends must have faced time after time and still do. However, I am aware of my whiteness. I stand out and have to wonder if the people on the bus or train or corner think, “Oh, he’s white. What’s he doing here?” This is a new experience on which I am reflecting.
Learn:
I am in a culture of leaders who are challenging me to look outside myself and explore the traditions of different Christian denominations, of different cultures, different communities, and different people. I am being encouraged to seek to understand before I seek to be understood, to let go of how I think things (church, education, worship, etc.) should be done and to look, listen, and learn from the experiences of others. What a wonderful, terrifying, and bold admonition.
Serve:
This idea of servitude keeps running through my mind: “This year, I want to always err on the side of service and respect. To be the one who takes the initiative and who puts forth effort and who goes out of his way for the sake of another. If the butter needs put away and I’m not sure if anyone else needs it, I should put it away. If a conflict needs resolved, let me begin the conversation that brings reconciliation. If a neighborhood kid wants to come to my house, I will walk to his house with him to ask his parents if it’s okay. If I’m not sure where the property line is on the sidewalk, I’ll sweep well past where I think it might be.
The other morning we read John 13 where Jesus washes his disciples’ feet. I challenged my community to think of modern equivalencies to foot-washing. We thought of sweeping another’s porch, or cleaning a garage, or washing a toilet.
Neighbors:
We met some folks who live across the street named Michael, Diane, and Lisa. Apparently, they all live in a semi-independent group home. They have welcomed us to the neighborhood and have even told us some of their precious stories. Lisa was in a car accident at the age of 18 and has lived in group homes ever since. She and Diane met last year and moved to Atlanta a few days ago. I guess we’re all strangers in a foreign land together. Michael is very talkative and always asks if I know where a guy can get a job around here. I’m not sure if he’s asking for his own sake or because he thinks I’d like to get one. He also tells me that he used to be in a biker gang and had a really long beard. The ladies really like the beard, but some people called him a shepherd. He tells me he didn’t like the shepherd part. He makes me laugh a lot, is very friendly, and is around the block quite a bit. I’m looking forward to seeing Jesus in these folks and sharing him with them.
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The End is like the Kingdom (Near) / Jul 29, 01:29 PM
Renae and I have a little over 72 hours left as residents of Huntington, IN. We plan to leave for Greenville, Ohio on Friday with all of our belongings. Renae’s folks are coming Thursday and some friends are helping us load up a box truck that evening. As we’ve said, leaving is sad, but going is very exciting!
During the first week of August we’ll be hanging out in OH, just chilling, storing our stuff in Renae’s parents’ barn, reading, and being with family. The second week of August will be spent with my family in PA where we’ll do some camping, catch up with a few friends, take in a Hagerstown Suns baseball game and just relax with loved ones. After that week we’ll head on down to NC to spend another week with Renae’s family in the Outer Banks. During the fourth and final week of our month-long vacation (this will probably never happen again, so we’re going to live it up!) we will spend some time hiking in North or South Carolina and then head to Atlanta for orientation to our Mission Year.
For now, Renae is saying goodbye to clients and Rusty is trying to get rid of junk and get boxes packed. Our last Sunday at Life church was a blessing…we’ll remember that day for a long time.
Who knows? Maybe we’ll live in Huntington again! It sure has treated us well. We got our degrees, our spouses, and first jobs here. We’ve found many friends and even some adopted grandparents here! (Don’t worry Pap & Nan H., Pap E., and Grandma F. You’re still # 1’s!)
Huntington…we hold you in our hearts and pray that God’s will Kingdom will come in so many exciting and real ways. After all, it is near (Mark 1:14).
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Getting Started / Feb 11, 04:06 PM
Renae and I are getting started. I suppose we’ve been “getting started” for a while now. This is our our first blog entry…mostly just to see if we’re doing it right. We’re definitely excited about MY and are looking forward to moving ahead with the whole process. Here are some other words that describe how we’re feeling…hopeful, anxious, scared, curious, reflective, anticipatory. We look forward to keeping all who read this up to date on the happenings leading up to, during, and following our MY experience.
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