Major life event: I (Chelsea) am no longer employed—the company I worked for dissolved the entire Marketing department I was a manager of. This has led us to use the severance period to get some major planting done.
First and foremost, we sincerely apologize for not executing on administrative tasks; we completely skipped last month’s update and have talked about posting multiple times last month until now... and it’s a new month.
More or less in somewhat chronological order, this is a recount of the last two months:
Core team projects
We have finished the first drafts of the Victor Haven Ministries documents. The purpose of those documents is to introduce someone who has never heard of VHM to what we are about, and how we are doing it. We will be posting those publicly next month.
Then, as a core team, we talked about bringing a few others into Sunday services for “beta testing” and getting honest feedback about the documents and systems we've created. We hope to start seeing faces outside of the core team as early as this upcoming Sunday.
Ultimately, our goal for everything we do is to lead individuals to personally engage with the Lord. The details we are figuring out now will hopefully be a minor part of how we spend time in the future.
Layoff
Then shortly after that, my (Chelsea's) marketing manager position and the rest of the marketing department were dissolved. As of June 6th, I am no longer working there. I signed an agreement that I'm not able to talk about the conditions of the agreement in order to receive severance, and we agreed to take the pay.
That marked a big shift for us as that has been our primary income as we are about 1/3 of the way fund-raised, meaning on average, John receives about $2000 per month.
Update on two-fold planting
In the short month we were covered by severance pay, we felt we should turn to God’s word to John of planting to get moving on prepping the land (we talked more about the word in the previous update).
In that time, John jack-hammered cement, family and friends helped move the rubble, his dad brought a tiller, his stepdad brought a truck, John built an irrigation system, etc.
At first we thought maybe God would use the gardening to provide an income, perhaps through farmer's markets or selling to local restaurants. But not long after much work was done, we both felt we were not to sell anything, but to give it away.
God has placed us on a corner lot of the neighborhood that gets a lot of foot traffic. As of this moment, we believe that we are to set up a stand that has a weekly pickup time. We may figure out a way people could donate financially if they want, but ultimately all the produce would be free. We can envision that space also being one where we have two or three chairs set up for anyone to receive prayer. If we make this a space open Sunday mornings, then those who participate in our church could also be present to pray for those wanting prayer. If and when someone encounters God for themselves in this space, it would be a low barrier to entry for them to simply join our community worship.
We have had the privilege to have a friend in town that is familiar with farming techniques John is using to help bounce ideas and also get the garden beds ready. As of this moment, there are ten new garden beds, and six of those are full of seeds, and a few have already sprouted. We also have more than 20 fruiting trees....which feels insane considering we have less than .2 acres.
We believe that a church should benefit the community it lives in. And we are starting to see how these two kinds of planting will come together to lead individuals to encounter Jesus, and how we as a community can learn to care for one another as the Spirit unifies us.
Wrapping up
Thank you for caring about us and what God is doing here. While our confidence is in God, we are also aware he is using you all to support us in living out his vision. Bless you for reading all of this if you are still with me here! I know this post has been a bit long. May your eyes, ears, heart, and mind always be sensitive to the Lord and may you know how much he loves knowing you.
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