The Status

On Day 37 of our #40daysoffaith adventure moving from MD to CO on the word of God, I marveled at how quickly a community can come around a new family, and I reflected over my two-year journey of learning how to build community from scratch.

In the morning, my husband and I had to pack up our camper to take it to the dealer for repairs. (Spoiler: they didn’t do any.) 😖 When our neighbors saw us bringing back a U-haul, they were practically indignant!

• Neighbor 1: “You’re not packing up and leaving, are you?! You just got here!
• Us: “No, we are just renting the Uhaul to haul our camper to the dealer for repairs.”
• Neighbor 1: “What are you doing paying money to borrow a truck? You can just borrow mine!”
• Neighbor 2: “Or mine!”
• Neighbor 3: “Or mine! Mine is bigger than theirs! Haha.”

Well, then. Thank you very much for your offer of help!

Meanwhile, another neighbor invited us to move in next to his camper and use his Starlink WiFi for my business. “It’s incredibly fast, and I’d be happy to give you the password,” he said.

And then, Elaya’s school is willing to let her visit a second class while I’m on military duty so that my husband doesn’t have to single parent so much. This is not something they normally do, but they want to help us when we need it.

I can’t help but marvel at how quickly this community in Colorado has come around us. When I compare it to our last two years in Maryland, it’s like night and day! Don’t get me wrong, we miss our neighborhood there and left with some beautiful memories and relationships, but it took a LOOOOONG time. It was almost a year before we made any friends, and we watched many a birthday party be hosted in our neighborhood without getting an invite. But by the end of our time, my kid joyfully attended two birthday parties in three months—that’s living large for a two-year old—and I had several mom-dates with neighbors that allowed us to get to know each other, laugh and cry together, and part in tears.

In our last season, God told us to not go to a church, but to be the church to our neighbors. We served, and blessed, and waited on, and prayed over, and fed as many people as we could in that neighborhood. In some ways, it started out as very hard ground, but I feel like God is redeeming that hard work with a super easy harvest in this new neighborhood!

The Takeaway

Being a good neighbor—living in a healthy community—is a central part of God’s design for mankind!

If every guidance God had given to the Hebrews could be summed up in a phrase about loving one’s neighbor, THAT MUST BE A REALLY BIG DEAL.

The Prayer

God, thank you for pouring out an abundant sense of neighborliness upon us in this season! Show us how we are to employ this favor, for their good and your glory. Amen.

The Challenge

What is your #40daysoffaith adventure and how did Day 37 go? What is one way you can bless your neighbor this week?