Beautiful Bookends
This blog is the bookend of our time living in the San Francisco Bay area. The “Bookend” of something marks the beginning and the end of a specific period, event, or space. It is the end of our physical time there as a support couple and the beginning of a new type of relationship while living further away. There were many beautiful and some naturally sad book end chapters in the months of June, July and the beginning of August which I have enjoyed reflecting on.
Our last blog ended with preparation for the Vacation Bible school at SFP which happened in the beginning of June. God answered our prayers with enough registrants from the community to hold the Vacation Bible school! There were a couple nail biting weeks of waiting to see how this effort would be blessed and trying to figure out old and new advertising venues to reach others to come. One lesson we learned was the importance of having updated modern and large print signage at the front of your hall that is noticeable from the street via car or walking! Another helpful thing was that one camper came from his mom typing online “Vacation Bible schools in the area” and ours was one of the first ones to pop up, which was due to Search Channel Optimization(SCO) which we thank the WCF tech team for and those working behind the scenes in the digital space. I will not touch on the week of VBS as you can read a great T2T blog post about it called “When a plague hits Egypt.” We loved our week serving together despite the challenges that the group faced and had a comeback story blessed by God to remember forever.
During the week of VBS and the week after we had our fifteen year old niece stay with us who volunteered at VBS. She enjoyed spending time with another young person in the SFP Ecclesia who had also volunteered during the week of VBS. It was awesome to be able to have another young person stay for an extended period of time in the bay area for the locals. Gideon and I also enjoyed having some fellowship hangouts the week after VBS, helping with some jobs that needed completing post VBS, and helping organize the following Sunday school year, etc.
During the end of June and beginning of July a lot of members travel to visit family, Bible schools etc for an extended period of time. Gideon and I were thankful to be able to help fill in some of the holes from those who were away with continued tech help, exhorting, presiding, snacks, etc. We also enjoyed some fellowship lunches with members and we had some visitors to the Ecclesia who were either on vacation, work trips or visiting family during that time.
Another highlight of our bookend time in July was when we were able to spend a fun afternoon and evening at the beach and inside a restaurant watching a soccer game with some of the local Ecclesial families. It feels truly special to become friends with those young and old at the Ecclesia and spending time with everyone was a real joy to us! Which made the bookend of our time also sad as we knew goodbyes were coming and the packing up had begun of our apartment.
Before our time came to an end, one of the sweetest chapters was bringing a young teenager to their first Bible school and being their guardian for Idyllwild Bible school and the Idyllwild Bible school in general. We taught the third period of the middle school class which had one of my awesome SFP Sunday school students in it and other young people who came to the Sequoia weekend and Vacation Bible school. There were also many dear to us members of the SFP meeting and Northern California friends who came to Idyllwild and we got to spend more time with them which was a huge blessing.
Once we returned from Bible school it was time to finish packing up the apartment and members came to help us do a big move of the donated items back to the hall and made dinner for us. We also enjoyed spending time with the committee in SFP who had worked very hard to have us come the past year, during our time there and who helped us pack up and provided us a place to stay when our lease was up for a couple days.
We appreciated a busy week of moving, a couple more visits with families and senior members from the Ecclesia and the week ending with a very special Sunday memorial service and a goodbye lunch. It was a very hard goodbye and we will treasure the time God allowed us to spend together at SFP. After lunch we left directly from the hall to start our roadtrip back across the country. We look forward to visiting the Ecclesia for a week in the beginning of December and helping where we can from Maryland.
One reason I share an itemized writing style of our time as a support/domestic missionary couple is for others to read a little bit about what that looks like week to week. In hopes of familiarizing those who might also be thinking of becoming one or in a position to support a small ecclesia as a support couple in the future. So please feel free to ask us more about our experience!
Thank you for reading about the things that happened this past year and we look forward to writing one more blog post about our overall experience as a support couple with less details of week to week events.
Love in Christ,
Shoshanna & Gideon Hewitson