How we met Pastor Alex was definitely something God planned. We have been going to our church New Hope for many years. During the summer we like to go camping and we saw that Journey church had a Sunday night service. We talked about it and going to Journey at night would allow us to stay camping a little bit longer on Sundays. So we started going to Journey on Sunday nights during the summer. After going a few Sundays, there was an announcement asking if anybody could host a pastor and his family, while they are in Bend. We filled out the connection card telling them that we would be able to do that. We got a call and they asked us if we would be able to do to host them. We opened our home for them and enjoyed our time getting to know them. We quickly became closer and became great friends and enjoyed our time and our fellowship together.

We started going back to our home church and when we were told there was going to be an opportunity to go on a mission trip to Uganda we knew we wanted to go. We arranged to go to Uganda a week before our church arrived so we could spend more time learning about The City Church and seeing our friends. We stayed at Hope house for four nights and became very close with Immaculate, the manager of Hope House and enjoyed spending time with the girls. We went with Immaculate and Andrew to home visits the first day, then we visited some businesses started from Fit for Life, on the third day we visited Fields Preschool.

Over the years we have hosted them several times. In 2020 Pastor Alex came with his wife, Faith and Alvin, their son and the worship team and they were stuck here during Covid. We were able to find them a home for a while in Sunriver, but then in June they came to live with us for seven weeks in our new home. Over this time, our friendship to grew even more. 

We praise God that he planned this. We are one big family now, and really enjoy our time when we are together it’s wonderful to be able to pray for each other and it’s so nice to have friends who have the same beliefs as you do they will always be there to our hearts .

‍