Friends, it has been a wild ride here recently! So much happens - sometimes in a single week - that it can be hard to keep up… and even harder to know what to single out for you in this newsletter. I am organizing this edition around the many remarkable ways God is providing for us and through us here at the EDF.

To begin with some big news first: In less than three months we have raised just over $30,000 from individuals, sister churches, and grants toward our kitchen renovation project. Multiple people, churches, and grant-giving bodies are also considering giving us further funds. We have also received the first of two $75,000 payments from the Sisters of the Precious Blood, with another $75,000 coming in January!

We have found an amazing Christian brother with expertise in commercial kitchen design and hired him (for an incredibly affordable sum) as a consultant to work with us on design, regulatory, and resourcing matters.

We hope to begin the upgrade of our kitchen in the first quarter of 2026 sometime, so the fundraising pace is great! If you want to be part of this, we still have plenty of money we need to raise to make this happen. (We are trying to raise a total of $300,000.) You can give at the following link and/or share that link with others as part of this newsletter. Just sharing this opportunity is a great help! Learn more about the campaign and give here.

What Jesus Looks Like

The image above says a lot for me. Dolores offered this homeless friend of ours a hug on a recent Sunday morning and he melted right into it. They held onto each other for a while like that. Dolores prayed over him. This is one of her famous “Jesus hugs.” I’ve probably told you about them in a previous email, but now you can see what they look like in practice! She hugs folks and lets them know that it’s really Jesus who is hugging them and Jesus whose love they feel in that hug. This is how Jesus appears in our midst. He appears in the guise of the needy and the homeless, as well as in the guise of those people (sometimes homeless and needy themselves) who extend love and help to their neighbors. Jesus takes on flesh in every such embrace.

Loving help has been rendered to the needy in many ways here just in the last six weeks. In that time we’ve prevented two families from being evicted from their homes via rental assistance, delivered food and supplies to more than a dozen needy families that can’t make it out here on Fridays, bought and installed a large window AC unit for a young mother with three children (including an infant) who had no AC in her house during a terrible heat wave, marshalled significant financial assistance for a family with a child in the hospital, put clothing on the backs of a several hundred people, served several hundred families with pantry help (now including fresh produce), and we served, with our partners, well over 2000 meals to hungry neighbors from our dilapidated kitchen.

If you want to see what some of this looks like in practice, we were featured in a video package by the Church of the Brethren recently. Check it out here.

A Pantry Upgrade Finished, A Garden Growing

What started as a dirty, unfinished, un-air conditioned garage has been transformed - at long last! - into a fully operational pantry building with insulation, upgraded electric, walls and a ceiling, new light fixtures and plenty of room for tables, shelving, and fridge and freezer units (we have funds available for those and are working to source them). Check out what the garage looked like just after we finished the last phase of the upgrade earlier this summer:

Now that the pantry building has been upgraded we are working on expanding the amount, types, and quality of food we give out. Last week, as I type this, we served 107 families with food from this building! That number is rising as need rises around us.

One way we’ve been able to add to our food offerings here is through our newly expanded Community Garden inistry. Our Community Development Director, Chi Adeliyi, has partnered with the COB’s Global Food Initiative, Declare Dayton, and the Dayton Foundation to install a dozen large beds plus some medium sized ones, host community gardening events, procure extra produce from partner farms and gardens, and provide educational opportunities for individuals and families wanting to learn how to provide food for themselves. Two Christian farmers, a local community gardening ministry, and our own garden have been providing fresh produce through the pantry in recent weeks. Check it out!

Odds and Ends

We’re not just interested, of course, in physical gardening. We’re hoping to sow to the Spirit so we might reap salvation, spiritual healing, hope, and joy for ourselves and for our neighbors! We’re hoping to provide a faithful witness to Jesus, make disciples, and practice our Lord’s Way together in this neighborhood we love. By God’s grace and with his help… that’s what we’re doing!

Last month we received five people into membership in our congregation. Four of them were Nigerians! The non-Nigerian in the bunch, our sister Jessica, is practically a pastor herself already, sharing the good news and caring for others in need! Our new Nigerian members, meanwhile, are all actively serving as missionaries elsewhere. (Maybe I can share that story later - it’s too much to get into here!)

Many other beautiful things are happening here and I’ll wrap up with images of a small sample of them.

God shows his love to us here in so many ways! One way he shows his love to us is through you. We are immensely grateful for the prayers, financial gifts, and hours of volunteer labor from people beyond our little fellowship. Our small church’s resources are multiplied many times over by Jesus and the main way he does that is through people like yourself! Thank you so, so much for your partnership in ministry. Your continued support helps us do what we do here.

As ever you can give to our general fund (which needs support) or the capital campaign at our website here.