“To find God, you must look with all your heart. To remain present to God, you must remain present to your heart. To hear his voice, you must listen with your heart. To love him, you must love with all your heart. You cannot be the person God meant you to be, and you cannot live the life he meant you to live, unless you live from the heart.” – John Eldredge

Dear Friends and Family,

These last 16 months have been a journey of the heart for Brenda and me, and our kids. We have experienced God revealing a bigger story in our lives, in our hearts, in the hearts of those around us, those supporting us, those praying for us. And this bigger story being written is not what we anticipated at all.

The smaller story, which we focused on in the beginning, was raising support, selling our house, me quitting my career, getting our kids in school, and moving to New Orleans. While this doesn’t seem like the small story, after all that’s what we have been trying to accomplish for the last year and a half, it really is.

So, what is the bigger story? God has been calling us to be fully alive in him.

I know, on the surface this seems to be a mystery, that somehow this should be the smaller story, or a story that is a given. However, the more we spiritually prepared to walk away from all we had into something unknown, the deeper we pushed into God, and the deeper we pushed into God the more we changed, and the more we changed the more the enemy opposed us. And the irony is that we don’t believe he is opposing the smaller story; us moving to New Orleans, but rather he was and continues to oppose the bigger story. Our intimacy with God.

You see, if we had raised our support quickly, sold our house soon, and everything magically fell into place, that would have required no real faith, no true understanding of what it means to press into God, to trust him and live in this myth that he is revealing, this bigger story we have fallen into, and the vital roles he is asking us to play. While we thought these roles were to be played out in New Orleans, we are beginning to see that this story has taken an unexpected turn that the author himself has written; the kind of story that takes you off in a new direction, an adventure that was unknown and unforeseen only a short time ago.

There were several things that happened this summer in a short period of time that we thought would propel us to New Orleans before the school year began. Devin was accepted into Audubon Charter School and although Makenna was not, we were at peace with homeschooling her for this year. A house one block from our core community was opening up for rent at the right time (another story of God moving a couple from CRM Communitas in New Orleans to CRM NieuCommunites in San Diego). Support was almost there. Mike would get a part time job which we wrote about in our last letter. All the right things seemed to be falling into place and as Chad Carlson put it, “there was a big landing strip just waiting for us in New Orleans” and we were ready to go.

We went to New Orleans the first week in August to register Devin for school and to pray that God would make it clear if these events were his moving in our lives to make the “jump” and if so we needed start thinking about transition. Specifically we were praying about our house in Illinois. It was still unsold. While we were in the Big Easy we had 3 families looking at our house that week, one to buy and two to lease. We waited and prayed specifically that God would move one of these families to buy/lease our house so we could be released to move. That never happened. We came home and waited another week and prayed. In the meantime, 4 others houses along our street sold.

What followed the next couple of weeks (at the end of August) was some real wrestling with God and trying to gain a clear understanding of what he was trying to say to us in this space. During this time we heard of a friend that was praying Exodus 33 for us, and specifically in verse 14 where the Lord said, “My presence will go with you and I will give you rest”. So we joined in this prayer and began to ask God to give us rest, to give us peace about whatever it was that he was doing; and then we began to listen with our hearts.  It was during this time that God gave us peace about letting go of New Orleans and that he was doing bigger things in our lives and the lives of those around us and of those in New Orleans. It was very difficult to trust God in this space and to let go of our dream and desire to be in New Orleans.

The do-er part of our nature feels like we failed. After all we didn’t end up getting to New Orleans like we had planned. We wrestle with this. However, God consistently reminds us that in the bigger story here, there is no failure because he is still writing it. And he is asking us to remain present to him.

So our hearts are at peace in staying here in Illinois for the time being. And they are at peace with releasing New Orleans. This peace only came after we put aside all our own insecurities and trust that he is good. So we will remain in him, listen to him and wait on him each day to give us direction in our journey. We will continue to live from our hearts here, now, in our community while we fulfill our calling to be missional.

We love you and thank you for your support,

The Zook’s

A few questions and answers:

• Are we going to remain on staff even though we are not moving to New Orleans? No we are officially stepping off staff effective immediately.
• What is going to happen to the money that we have raised (you have given)? The money will be directed to the ministry it was intended to support: Communitas New Orleans.
• How do I stop my monthly support? All funds that were set up to automatically go into our account were stopped as of September 25^th and no additional withdrawals will be made out of your account. However, you can call the office to verify that this has happened. 800/777-6658 or 714/779-0370
• Can I continue to support Communitas New Orleans? Yes. When you call the office you can request that your support be directed to The Brantley’s or the Carlson’s. There is still a great need in New Orleans as God as God continues to use this ministry in the rebuilding of this great city emotionally, spiritually and physically.

Our emotional lives and our spiritual lives have different dynamics. The ups and downs of our emotional life depend a great deal on our past or present surroundings. We are happy, sad, angry, bored, excited, depressed, loving, caring, hateful, or vengeful because of what happened long ago or what is happening now.

The ups and downs of our spiritual lives depend on our obedience – that is, our attentive listening – to the movements of the Spirit of God within us. Without this listening our spiritual life eventually becomes subject to the windswept waves of our emotions.

- Henri Nouwen

Well, we are still waiting for it to sell and the plan is as soon as we sell it – we will move. That has been our state of mind for the last 4 months. Our home has been on the market for 12 months. We have had several showings and a few recently where we made the top 1 or 2 favorite homes of the prospective buyers. Yet no offers. As you all know too well, the economy has made the housing market very weak, banks aren’t giving loans to buyers and the loan-to-value ratio continues to slide. We are in a position where the “market value” of our home has dropped so much in the last 4 years that if we wanted to “price our house to sell” according to the market; then we would be upside down about $50,000. Yikes! We can’t do that. So we are pricing it where we will not make any money, but we will also not lose any money and have to write a check at the end of the sell, a check we don’t have.

Again, our plan is to move as soon as our house sells. With our budget cut in half and the plans to get a part-time job our house is what is keeping us from moving right now. Originally we budgeted approx. $20K for our on-time moving expenses from Chicago to New Orleans. The good news is that the funds that you have been supporting us with monthly have been adding up in our account and it looks like these initial one-time expenses are going to be covered from your support! Thank you!

Currently we are at 30% of our original budget. In other words, you, our supporters have committed $2,550 a month to our mission. Thank you for those commitments! Here is the reality; We are going to cut our budget in half and one of us will have to get a part-time job when we arrive in New Orleans. This is a good thing as it will do two things; first, this will relieve the pressure of our support base, and second, it will allow us to become more submerged in the community and culture of New Orleans and give us more legitimacy for our presence in the eyes of the people living there. 

Cutting our budget in half will then put our monthly support level at 60% with what we currently have committed on a monthly basis, and this will allow us to start to draw on our funds that you have so graciously been giving once we arrive. We are still hoping that some of you will be able to join our support team in the near future so we can get our support to 100% of our new budget. So to that end we would like to ask that you please prayerfully consider supporting us on a monthly basis, no matter what the amount. Click on the Duck to the right to start now.

Our blogging has obviously been slow (or non-existent is more like it). Hopefully we can make some time to do more. Until then here is our next edition of The ZookCrew Chronicles – June Edition.

In a mailbox near you: The ZookCrew Chronicles – April 2009

If you would like to recieve our newsletters by email or snail-mail, please contact us by clinking on the contact tab above.

Last night Devin and Makenna got up in front of 200+ people and performed.

The first video is Devin, and his buddy Tyler, performing the infamous “Peanut Butter Skit”! I love this skit and Devin was in his element as he made people laugh and squirm in their seats.

The next video is Makenna stepping up accapella style, singing “Amazing Grace”.  She was very nervous but did a great job as she stood in her glory, in front of all of us,  singing for her Lord.

Makenna and Mike attended the annual daddy/daugher dance again this year at the school. Makenna said it was “the best night of her life!” Mike agreed.

Daddy's little girl.

Lovin' her daddy!

Corsage Power Activated!

Lovely.

THIS is what we woke up to this morning!

Makenna was very excited to sing a song that she wrote for Brenda for her birthday. So after breakfast this was her blessing to Brenda, each word was carefully chosen to express her love for her Mom. She figured out the first part of the melody on her keyboard. She did a great job – she’s got a little soul in her I think!