​Celebrate Christ's resurrection by supporting Vietnam foster children

Children who come from rural Vietnam usually don’t have the opportunity to go to school if they stay in the villages. We partner with a local missionary to provide nutrition and scholarships for foster children in Vietnam. 

​If 2,500 people each give $100 this year, we can help meet physical and spiritual needs for 500 children and families in 7 different countries.

On Saturday, March 10, 2018, a team of 14 volunteers went out to serve the homeless. We distributed socks, beanies, food, blankets, water, hand wipes, and rain ponchos to about 11 homeless people.

​During this season, it has been extremely cold and raining profusely. We wanted to provide items that will help keep them warm and dry. Normally clothing items are very helpful since they don’t have much opportunities to wash their clothes. 

​We got to have conversations with the people we see on a regular basis. We talked about possibly taking them out to lunch and getting to know them personally. We are trying to show them the love of Christ, and to get to know them on a personal basis. We are hoping that this will open doors up for them to come visit our church and accept Jesus Christ. One of the people we help out named Mike isn’t really for church, but he said he would be open to visiting Echo Church, which is our local church, one Sunday. 

​What do these colleges all have in common? They are schools that our students aspire to attend. 

Our low-income tutoring program serves elementary and middle school students, and some of our previous students are now in high school. But we can tell how the East Palo Alto students who have attended our program have college ambitions that differ from their peers in the area. It is very exciting that we have the privilege of encouraging these students at such an early age.

Marcus Givens, the Development Officer of O'Keefe's parent ministry BCM, shared the following: 
​
I want to share with you a very encouraging conversation I heard, when I recently visited CREATE Studios, our STEAM (science, tech, engineering, arts and math) program. Kids were doing their homework, and I had the fun of helping a very bright young lady, whom we’ll call Delfina*, with her algebra.

Maybe what stood out the most was the seemingly everyday conversation about colleges. I sat next to Delfina, who wants to be an engineer or maybe a doctor. She wants to go to Stanford, but knows it's tough to get into. This didn't phase her of course. She began to explore other schools, and other students, while working on their homework, chimed in.

​On Saturday, February 24, 2018, our homeless ministry had its first meeting for the semester. We did not do any outreach because we wanted to go over goals and plans for this semester. Also, I wanted to go over the rules and provide an introductory meeting for newcomers. We had 9 volunteers show up. During the meeting we enjoyed fellowship over some Chinese egg rolls and got to know more about each other. This semester we have 8 returning volunteers and 6 new ones.

​My goals for this semester are to get our volunteers to grow closer together and to build a bond beyond the homeless outreach. God has put it on my heart to put love as our goal, loving the people we serve, and also the people we serve with.

​I explained to the volunteers about how we love Christ because He first loves us, and that Christ’s love compels us. I wanted to explain to the volunteers that it’s not about the items we hand out, or what we say, but it's about if the people see genuine love from us, and that if we consistently go out there and remember each one of them by name.