Things have been so busy around here with planting our church,  New City Covenant Church.  It’s been wonderful but exhausting…like, I came home from Operation Turkey Sandwich, turned on whatever holiday flick ABCFamily was airing and passed out on the couch letting the kids fend for themselves— from my understanding there were jelly sandwiches and cream soda involved in their T-Day lunch.

But whatever, they were fine—hopped up on sugar—but fine,  while TC and I rested from a very exciting morning! By the grace of God and with the help of lots of friends, we pulled off our first Operation Turkey Sandwich where:

  • We collected over 200 lbs of roasted, de-boned, and carved turkey
  • 5 “baking bashes”, parties where people gathered to bake for New City, took place all across Greater Boston area
  • We baked 200 stuffing muffins and pumpkin chocolate bars
  • We delivered two hundred bags to Starbucks employees, check-cashing retail associates, 20 fire-fighters, 13 police officers, countless bus drivers and cabbies, as well as one unfortunate person in lock-down at the Dudley police station
  •  We had over 20 volunteers not counting kids join us today
  • One brave woman chased down a bus to give the driver a lunch
  • All of the children on the trip got to pose in or on a fire truck
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My kiddos packed in tight on our way to Operation Turkey Sandwich. there’s 12 reusable bags with over 200 brown paper bags, nearly 150 lbs of turkey, 170 stuffing muffins, 50 pumpkin chocolate bars and 3 kids…now that’s a church planter’s car

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We were so excited to use The Emmanuel Gospel Center’s kitchen as our work site and home base. Check the cool label the Hubs made for OTS.

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First wave of turkey sandwich making. We made 200 in total! I thiiiiink there’s 80 sandwiches there. I don’t know I was standing on the other side of the room on a chair yelling, “make sure every bag that goes out for delivery is complete with a lunch box note, a pumpkin bar, a stuffing muffin, mayo and mustard” Y’all my OCD came out hard-core that day.

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Hey now, check my cute Hubby in black making sandwiches. There’s something sexy about a man preparing food, no?

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These firefighters were so touched by our bagged lunches, they invited us to take a picture with them. There I am, with a firefighter that looks exactly like my older brother. Wow. Small world.

This week I’m preparing for our Upside Down Christmas Party so I’ll post something about that next week.

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I’m also starting a new series later this week called, “Public Housing Hospitality”.

What happens when God responds to a woman’s complaints that she feels lonely and wants a tribe by asking her to embrace hospitality even though she lives in a tiny, public housing apartment?

What happens if said girl read, “Bread and Wine” and she thought, ‘Shauna— if you think I’m going open my lowly public housing home to people and invite them to sit around my dinged up table that takes up too much space in my matchbox kitchen to eat (probably burnt or bland) food on plastic serving trays because I can’t afford the good stuff—then you’re drunk…go home?’

What happens if the radical hospitality of Jesus messes up said hospitality-aphobic public housing dweller and she’s challenged to open her home for the holidays?

This advent series will explore all that. So tune back in later on this week.

And for now, if you want to know more about our church planting story, visit my friend Heather’s blog, “A little yes”.  I have the honor of being featured as today’s “yes” and sharing our journey towards church planting that started on our epic road trip, “Moore Tour 2013”.

Back to Biznass,

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