A much needed update

Well this is the first update of the whole day and we have lots of pictures from the past couple days to share with you. First, Brad talked about Mosaic, which we attended at the Mayan Theater downtown. Here are some pictures:

Here is the Mayan Theater from the outside

 Here is the theater from the inside. This is also used for a night club

This is a prayer room that they set up for people to go through

Yesterday we went to the Crystal Cathedral to get a tour. Our tour guide's name was Karl and he was probably in his mid-80s. We would ask him questions about the Cathedral and he would usually not end up answering and go off on a tangent about his life. The Cathedral was really beautiful, but that seemed to be a main focus. Here are some pictures:

 The outside of Crystal Cathedral

 The inside of the sanctuary. Here is their organ, which is one of the biggest organs ever. There were also pipes and trumpets at each side and in the back. They told us they spend 20 million dollars on this building... crazy!

This was Karl

In the afternoon we got a tour of the church we are staying at, Bel Air Pres, and this was obviously the most familiar church we've been to. It was nice to see their facilities and hear about their ministries. While they are similar to our church, some of their ministries were different since they are reaching out to a different city, so it was great to learn about those. I really liked their emphasis on small groups at people's homes throughout the week. At night we went to the Dodger game, which the students updated about. Here are a few pictures:

The boys were very happy to get Dodger Dogs

Our name made it onto the big screen! We always cheered when it come on.

Today we did part 2 of our Bible study on the church in the morning and in the afternoon we worked at the Dream Center with their food truck ministry. We went to two different projects. We were split into two groups, one of which distributed the food to the adults and the other of which played with the kids. The kids were so excited to hangout with us and just wanted to be loved on... and since Easter is coming up we prepared an Easter egg hunt for them! While we couldn't take pictures while working (a rule they had), here is a picture of the Dream Center's main building:

Tomorrow we will do the food truck ministry again in the morning. We will also get a tour to learn more about their ministry in the city. Afterward, we went to Hollywood to see the theater (below) and the side walk stars. This was pretty cool, especially for those (like myself) who have never been there before. Then we went to the Griffin Observatory that overlooks the city before heading back to home base to debrief for the night. We have an early morning tomorrow (we're leaving at 7am because we know we'll be in LA traffic), so please pray for energy and a great last day of serving! Thanks for checking in :)

Meis