Dear Friends and Family at Mars Hill Bellevue,
It’s well overdue but now that the dust has settled I wanted to give an update as to where the Winkler’s have landed and how we are doing. I think of you often and pray for you as well. God has been so gracious to us through the community that sent us the way you did and then by providing a community here for us, right from the beginning as we had several families waiting at our house to unload our stuff and set up our furniture when I pulled up in the truck.

God provided a house for us to rent in a great suburban community in the northeast part of the city of San Diego called Carmel Mountain Ranch and we moved in mid July. There are many kids in the neighborhood for ours to play with and it has a great community feel. We are excited to become a part of the community through the local sports teams, school functions, and neighborhood events. We appreciate your prayers as we begin missional outreaches in our community. We plan on throwing a big BBQ in our front yard on Halloween night, inviting hundreds of our neighbors to come meet us and each other as they trick-or-treat with their kids. I’d love your prayers that night specifically.

We’ve been blessed to be part of the Kaleo church community. They have been welcoming and supportive since our arrival. We are currently participating in one of their Missional Communities to learn how they are doing things. At the same time we have been blessed with a few families that live in our community that feel called to join us in planting the North Kaleo church plant. We are currently meeting with them regularly throughout the week to learn one another’s stories and be involved with what our community is doing. The vision is to start our own missional community with these families this fall and grow to 4-5 missional communities in Northern San Diego and then we will launch our own Sunday service and break away from the main Kaleo gathering sometime in 2010 as God provides. It’s been exciting to see God stir the hearts of people already to start something new.

Our family has settled well. Knox and Caleb started school on August 20 (early!) and they love it. They attend the neighborhood school a couple blocks from our house. They love riding bikes and scooters to school every day. Lucas is speaking in sentences and even paragraphs and most of it makes sense! It’s been a joy to see him grow up. Ava is as cute as ever and smiles at everyone that walks by. Angie is doing well and enjoying being a wife and mom. She has also been busy practicing hospitality and having people over several times a week. Last week alone we had over 50 people in our home! I’ve been busy working with Railworks Inc. to get a Southern California branch opened and I enjoy working out in the community.

I want to say a special thanks to the many of you at the Bellevue Campus who supported us and blessed us with gifts as we left. We were simply flabbergasted at how generous you were with us. You gave more than $6,000 toward this mission that God has sent us on and it is a huge testimony of your love for us and for God and his mission. We can’t say thank you enough. We are blessed and excited that you also are partnering with us by continuing financial support from the Bellevue Campus.

While we are blessed by the new community of believers God has provided us with here in San Diego, we continue to miss the precious church we left in the Northwest. I pray God’s grace will be multiplied to you at the Bellevue Campus in the same manor which you so selflessly blessed us.

Love,
The Winkler Family (Jesse, Angie, Knox, Caleb, Lucas and Ava)