Recap of Peace City Church 2023

Signs of welcome, invitation & prayer box outside our home.

Nestled in West Salem, Oregon is our Edgewater neighborhood where we have been called to live, plant Peace City Church and serve our neighbors. As the map shows, the area is defined by the Willamette River as a boundary to the South, the West Hills jetting up as a boundary on the West and North, and Wallace Road (a commercial 4 lane road) to our East. We prayer walk this little piece of earth weekly with open eyes and hands to love.

The blue star is our home. The green rectangle is the West Salem Park where we connect with a lot of neighbors.

In 2023, we prayed for specific individuals and anonymous requests placed in our prayer box and also in these 5 focus areas for all neighbors here: to experience the love of Jesus, for Christ-followers in the neighborhood to be light and love to others, for all to experience connectedness and belonging, for provision for those who are food and/or housing insecure, and for our neighborhood to be full of joy! We created a prayer card with these focus areas and handed them to all the other Christ-followers we know living here as well as the 3 churches present.

Ways we were guided by God to engage our neighborhood in 2023: 5 neighborhood front yard cookouts (pictured below) and a community garden party; weekly Sunday night worship and Bible study; popsicles given in the heat of summer & hot chocolate given in the cold of winter to those at our nearby park; the beautiful prayers and praises entrusted to us in the prayer box outside our home; physical needs of neighbors met: food, utility bills, car batteries jumped, bicycle tires filled; and community celebrations for Easter (also pictured below), Thanksgiving & Christmas welcoming all.

The goal of our ongoing involvement in our neighborhood is to bring life, hope and love of Jesus here. We partner with groups in different ways: Edgewater Partners participant, volunteer coordinator and party planner for the committee that brought the first street mural project into our neighborhood, coordinator of the Edgewater Community Garden, volunteer at HART (Horse Adaptive Riding Therapy), and an Executive board member of the West Salem Neighborhood Association.

We'd love to hear how you are the incarnational hands and feet of Jesus where you live. God bless the work of your life where you live, work and play!