Laura C.

Starting a new Community Group has been both joyful and challenging. Our group is certainly non-conventional! We’re not sure where God is leading us, but already exciting things are happening.

All Nations Serve started in May with a handful of women, with the purpose of sharing our lives together and growing in God’s love. We are from different nations, backgrounds, and even faiths. We meet at a business place for prayer and Bible study, and we always seem to be running out of time because we have families and busy careers.

One of our women who has been the most active member of our community group came from a Buddhist family in Thailand. Her father died recently, and she has to be absent for a while because her family honors the Buddhist ritual of 50-day solemn living after a loved one is deceased.

On a recent Saturday, we connected with Celebration Church in Orange, a Cambodian Church, to serve their poor neighbors in Santa Ana. We served a meal and distributed non-perishable food items, prayed and sang together in Cambodian, learned about their culture, and heard the testimony of a former Cambodian Buddhist who became a Christian and was recently baptized. I had my first Cambodian dish that day, even though I have lived in a county that is a melting pot for more than 40 years! People were friendly and loving. Honestly, I could not tell who was serving and who was being served, because we all sat together to eat and enjoy fellowship. I do know I was served that day.

We had our first Community Group outing at Souplantation in Irvine. The husband of one of the women joined us, even though we were a group of women. He was not in any sense uncomfortable. We had great conversations about our families and faith and stayed in the restaurant until 9:30 p.m.! That has made us think that maybe our Community Group should include more than women….

Our joy has come from spending time together to study the Word of God, praying together, hanging out, and serving our neighbors. We have shared our lives and are growing to love God and each other. We are excited knowing that where we go is tied to our utter dependency on God.