Sending Jason And Alma To Long Beach

Jason and Alma are heading "home" to help plant a church. This is what they shared on Sunday...

6 years ago.

Alma was accepted to UCI for a doctoral program. I was beginning to tour more and we were looking for a church that understood our unique family nuances. And could shepherd us through our first years of marriage,

We also knew it was temporary by nature because, we were only in OC because of school. But after school was done and it was time to move on; we couldn't do it!

We actually fell in love with our church family and not only liked but craved the body life.

Then we were faced with a dilemma that if we were gonna do body life well, we had to choose where heart and calling actually was. We felt that given the gifts and bends that god gave us, we knew we were called to LB due to its diversity and spiritual needs. And to stay in Orange was just dividing our time and heart and we weren't serving Orange or Long Beach very well.  

2 years ago.

A friend contacted Jason about being called to plant in Long Beach. Jason had known the pastor for quite some time. He was a chaplain on a tour he did in 2012 and was such an encouragement and blessing to his life. So when he and his family arrived in Long Beach, we were able to invite them to our part of the city and get to know each other’s hearts and goals more. We learned that a lot of what they were praying for for their own marriage and family needs were very similar to what we were praying for and it turned out we were basically answered prayers for each other.

6 months ago.

We joined the church plant last Fall. It's in North Long Beach and made up of about 15-20 families. People from Tennessee to Washington state as well as a few locals.

A good friend here at Sovereign Grace reminded me as we were deciding to leave that we weren't leaving the church...we were part of the expansion of the church. Most of you remember the challenges of church planting and we would love your prayer for our new church as we labor to love God, love each other, and love Long beach.