AIDS Walk Silicon Valley - October 19

On Sunday, October 19, New Life participated with Team Beautiful Day in the 19th AIDS Walk Silicon Valley. This was our second year participating with this team, which is made up of churches from around the valley. This year, Team Beautiful Day set a goal of having 200 walkers and raising $20,000. With more than 800 walkers raising over $31,000, Team Beautiful Day was the largest team in the walk!

New Life helped the team meet this goal with 12 walkers raising over $1,600! Five New Lifer's raised over $100 each, so New Life helped them reach their goal with a match of $100. Congratulations to Jeremy, Joel and Justin Hyland, Haven Lee and Jeffra Bussmann!

All of the funds raised in this walk will provide education and support for those living with HIV/AIDS here in Silicon Valley. Why would churches participate? Because today, in an age of divisiveness, it is critical for Chritians to remember to show compassion for those in need. The AIDS Walk helps the churches to show that support in our community.

The Walk for AIDS sent out the following description of Team Beautiful Day to all of their walkers:

Team Beautiful Day was inspirational with over 820 members whose donations are currently over $30,000 making them the largest team ever with the most raised by any team in our records! With a theme of “The Church Has Left the Building” four churches closed for that day and invited their congregations to “get out of the pews and into the streets” to support the effort.

Many many thanks to everyone who walked and who supported our walkers.

Photo Album of New Life Beach Day - September 13, 2008

On Saturday, September 13, New Life hosted a Beach Day Gathering Event for the congregation and the core group of Reliance Covenant church. along with the church members and friends, we we were joined by 22 recently-arrived refugees from Bhutan, Burma and Iraq.

This was the first time that any of the refugees had seen the Pacific Ocean, and the very first time many of them had seen any ocean at all.

Gathering such disparate groups together at a Northern California beach is always risky. The weather is notoriously unpredictable, with days of 80 degrees and sunny in San Jose turning out to be 50 degrees and windy at the beach. Further, what if no one talked to each other? What if the refugees hated the ocean? What if no one wanted to share food together?

But God was in this from the beginning. The day was perfect, not too hot or too cold, everyone arrived in good spirits, the refugees were ready to try anything, even boogie boarding! And the New Life and Reliance folks were lovely and wonderful and open to meeting and interacting with our new friends.

Bonds were formed, new friendships sprouted, and we all got a chance to learn from one another in a way that most would never have had a chance to do without an event like this.

Many thanks to everyone who came, we hope to do more events like this in the future.

Enjoy the pictures!

Beach Day