East Central Ministries From a High School Senior

One of Desert Springs' High School students blogged about our recent Friday night venture to hang and serve with the people at East Central Ministries (ECM) here in Albuquerque. I could explain what makes these nights special and why we love doing it but let me let Leah explain:

Every 3rd Friday night of the month, Paradox, our youth ministry, and the Well, our college ministry partner up alongside some leaders in our church and travel down to the War zone and the Trumbel la Mesa neighborhood. Our meeting spot- ECM, short for East Central Ministries where we started consistently serving about a year and a half ago. Since that time, we have done numerous things serving at ECM such as, going to the nearby community center to play with kids and barbecue, go to the new school that was recently opened up in an old drug traficking house (praise God for that one :o)) and then last Friday, serving at Casa de Shalom. Casa de Shalom is a new thing that the staff at ECM have been trying to start for awhile, alot of meetings and preperation and prayer have been put into this idea and it is now in the making. About a year ago, Becky, our ECM leader and others alongside her thought of the idea of a Christian intentional living center. They began looking for land to do this and finally closed a deal a week ago today. Its a piece of land that has an apartment complex of 6 units, 2 houses, and a unit of 3 mini houses. These are gonna be used for about 14 different families and a couple of the staff down at ECM. They intend on using this Christian living center to help babysit each others kids, make cookies together and just really uplift and encourage each other through simple things that make a Christian family live out the gospel. When we got to ECM Friday night, we were all expecting to paint but Becky told us John had some other stuff planned for us that he needed to get done before we started on painting. We all took the short drive over to Casa de Shalom and began raking up piles of dried up pine needles and leaves that were basically a fire hazard waiting to happen. This was definitely an amazing time and probably one of the BEST times I’ve had since we started at ECM. It was cool to see our well off, spoiled kids and college kids get messy. We never stopped laughing and had so much to catch up on, all over a dozen rakes and shovels, alot of dust, and a box of white cheddar cheez its. Its amazing to see that stuff like that can bring us together, and show others who we are without words but rather actions. Alot of the families were moving on and a couple already had moved in and came outside to talk and watch the kids ride bikes. It was amazing to see them watch us and wonder why we were there but by the end of the night be talking and laughing with them just as much. Its a blessing to be a part of the Lord’s family when we are privileged enough to do stuff like that. Like the college ministry at DSC says, “we are just a bunch of messy people lifiting up one Great, AMAZING God.”