Many of you may remember from this thread that our church has begun a partnership with a church & ministry in Guatemala City.
Last Pentecost (in 2011), we embarked on a journey at North Street to focus on three things:
- The Arts ("How can we make space for artists?")
- Global Partnership ("How can we partner with what the Spirit of God is doing elsewhere?")
- Our Neighborhood ("How can we be a neighbor right where we're at?")
It's been going great so far.
This post is about something we are doing right now that hits all three of these initiatives.
We set aside a small corner of our Newell Gathering Room as a "nook" and art gallery (when I say small, think: 15'x15'). We are calling it the Ktizo Gallery & Nook. This space is meant to highlight and encourage artists among us. Check the website to read more about it if you'd like.
In May we took our first trip to Guatemala City to begin a partnership. Long story short: there is a ministry to kids in relationship with the church we're partnering with called Gotitas de Amor ("Droplets of Love"). It's a wonderful ministry I wish I could tell you much more about. But while we were there, we heard the stories of several of the older teens that had grown up and out of that ministry. One of them was Reyna. She is 17 years old. Please go here and read more about her and how this Nazarene Compassionate Ministry Center helped lift her up. Well she gave us seven of her pastel drawings, which was an act of the Spirit to us and affirmation of more than just the partnership (we just happened to have a small gallery). They've been hanging in Ktizo since we got back.
Today, we had the first public showing in our gallery. We did a little bit of networking and outreach. Several individuals from our very local community stopped in to see what was going on. It was great. We're learning, but it was a good start.
But the point (after all the above!) is that today's event kicked off a week-long online auction for Reyna's pieces. 100% of the proceeds will go to Gotitas de Amor. I'd love if you'd take a look at the auction page and even if you don't bid, if you're on Facebook, a click of the "Like" button on the main auction page would do us very well in spreading the word. But feel free to bid, too. :-)
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