THE PATH...

About a month ago Shawn and I had the opportunity to go to Kenya to visit some friends.  We felt prompted to go and visit but weren’t sure the full extent of the reason for our trip.  We had been to Kenya multiple times before and made arrangements with various friends in and around Nairobi to come visit. This time instead of staying downtown Nairobi we stayed at a small hotel in the Karen neighborhood.  The neighborhood is more residential and used to be the ranching estate of Karen Blixen in the early 1900s.  It has quiet tree lined streets far from the hustle of the downtown Nairobi high-rises and slums.

DESTINY...

When Shawn and I sold our house and moved to the Portland neighborhood we did not have any grand master plan to start Love City or honestly do any of the things that we ended up doing over the last seven years.  We were just following the spirit, one step at a time.  I remember we used to tell people the story of how we moved, and how Love City started, and they would always be so amazed that we had done what we did.  For us, though the amazing thing wasn’t us, it was how we got to watch God work every day, bringing together countless details we didn’t even know about so that at the right time, in the right place love happened. 

RISE OF THE REST...

The beginning of 2018 was an extremely busy time at Love City.  We opened Porkland, we finished a total renovation of the gym, and opened the renovated front room of the Mackin building as the Social Impact Incubator.  The goal of the incubator was to hold entrepreneur training classes based on a curriculum that we had received from some nonprofits in Chattanooga, TN.  We had worked on the renovating the room for weeks.  We had a hard deadline of May 9, the room had to be finished. 

BUILDING COMMUNITY...

Often you will hear Shawn and I talk about how the focus of everything at Love City is building community.  Even with Mighty Oak Academy, we say we’re not building a school, we’re building a community and a school just happens to be a part of it.  One tangible way that we have intentionally focused on building community with the school, is to require our parents to volunteer a certain number of hours a month.  When we first put that expectation in place, we weren’t sure how our parents would feel and how willing they would be to volunteer, but they have taken to it with gusto.

HOW DO YOU SOLVE A PROBLEM LIKE MARIA...

Five years ago, when Shawn had the dream of a forest on fire and the fire break keeping the field of saplings safe, we knew that for long term change for the kids in our community we would have to start with the saplings.  That’s why we started the preschool in 2018.  The pandemic taught us however that, while it is better to start young, we couldn’t all together ignore the older kids or large trees that were already on fire.  When we opened Mighty Oak Academy in January of 2021,…

NEIGHBORS...

One of the very first neighbors that started coming to the fish fry back when it was at the Mackin was our neighbor Danny.  Danny lives on St Cecilia St right across the street from the church.  He and his wife bought the house decades ago because his wife liked to sit on the front porch and see the stained-glass windows of the church across the street.  His wife passed away many years ago leaving Danny on his own.  He kept himself busy volunteering at the Portland Museum, the Portland Festival, being active…

THE GOAL...

When Shawn and I opened up the gym 6 years ago our immediate goal was to give kids in the neighborhood a safe place to hang out and come play ball.  As we got to know the kids that routinely would come, those goals deepened.  Not only did we want to give them a safe place to hang out, we also wanted to help them learn, grow and ultimately transform their own neighborhood.  We knew that it was a long-term goal.  When we first opened the gym, the largest age group that came were 10 an 11-year-old boys.  Then the girls followed the boys shortly after that, sitting on the bleachers…

AND WE'RE BACK...

If this summer was a whirlwind, the last week was a tornado.  We kicked off the week with our community back to school bash and ended with the first week of school for 2022 – 2023 school year in the books.  On Monday and Tuesday our teachers and staff made final preparations for school to start on Wednesday.  We had the staff taste test our new school menu for breakfast and lunch at the beginning of the week.  Our teachers put the final touches on their classrooms, and the support staff finished last minute projects in the building, everything from cleaning to putting in a new ceiling in the hallway and breakfast café.  It was long hours and a lot of work, but it all was worth it on Wednesday…

THIS IS WHY WE DO THIS...

This summer has been a whirlwind.  Shawn and I were just talking yesterday commenting about how it was only April when we sat down with our Nicole, our long time Love City family member and new school administrator and Dr Kathy our Academic Dean to reflect on the past school year and strategize how we were going to leap forward with our educators and put in place additional resources we learned we needed.  We came up with an organizational chart, and wrote job descriptions posting them on Indeed, looking for an elevation of skills…

KINGDOM OF HEAVEN..

When the world shut down in March of 2020, within a week of all the mandated closures, we had already secured a semi-truck load of fresh vegetables to distribute throughout the neighborhood.  We had been granted the use of an old meat packing plant on the corner of 19th and Market Street.  Shawn had contacted neighbors throughout the area to each come get a portion of the food out of the meat plant’s walk in coolers.  It wasn’t just organizations that Shawn contacted but regular neighbors, one such neighbor was BJ.  BJ owns BJ’s Kustom Auto mechanics shop on Bank St and 33rd.  BJ’s girlfriend is Sandy, who we had worked with on numerous real estate deals in the neighborhood. 

AUTHENTICITY..

Early in the life of Love City around April 2016, a volunteer group showed up to help us paint the ballroom (one of many times the ballroom at the Mackin would be painted over the last seven years).  It was a group of high schoolers led by a sophomore named Ethan Essex.  Every Wednesday evening at his house out in J-Town, his family would host around 100 students for a weekly youth group.  Ethan and the other co-leader of the group, Catherine, were looking for a place to bring the group to volunteer.

MS. SHARON...

If any of you have ever been down to Love City, you have seen the house we lived in adjacent to the back parking lot.  While we lived there, we parked in the lot behind the building, instead of parking on the street in front of our house on Alford Ave.  Whenever we would go anywhere, we would come out the driveway next to the building onto 26th street.  Across the street from the driveway there lived a woman named Ms. Sharon.  She would sit out on her porch and just observe the neighborhood most days.  She was probably in her early 70s when we moved to the neighborhood.

AMIRRON'S STORY...

About the same time that we started the fish fry in 2015 after we bought the Mackin building from Bobby, we starting having open gym every day.  At the time I was still working full time in the office with Humana, so Shawn would open the gym every day at 2:30 when the school busses would drop off out from and then I would come home around 5:00 and together we would close up the gym around 8pm, walk across the parking lot to our house, have dinner, go to bed and get up and do it all again the next day.  One of the very first days that we opened the gym, a group of 10 and 11 year old boys showed up, curious about who we were, and wanting to “shoot ball at the Mackin.” 

So how do you love people as they are? As the main purpose of our mission statement we actually have a practical list of how we love people as they are.  It's a list of what love is/does and what love is/does not.  For example love is incredibly patient, it joyfully celebrates honesty and is a safe place of shelter for people to be themselves.

On the opposite side love is not jealous when blessing comes to someone else, it does not seek its own honor, it is not easily irritated or quick to take offense and finds no delight in what is wrong.  We try to keep these practical tools in mind as a blueprint for how we love people as they are, which then helps change their lives. 

CARRYING ON THE TORCH...

Over the years Shawn and I have told the story of how we came to Portland countless times.  How we felt that we should sell our house in crescent hill and move to the Portland neighborhood just to love people.  That we didn’t have any grand plans to start Love City, it all just developed that way, starting with purchasing the house we lived in.  The house came with a 20,000 square foot community center next door and when we approached the owner of the house, he said, well it’s free, but you must buy the building.  And then we usually continue with the story of how we started open gym, the fish fry, and the Love City community developed from there.  We don’t usually get into the story of the man that we bought the building from, Bobby Otis. 

FROM OPEN GYM TO COMMUNITY...

One of the first things that we did when we opened the Mackin building was host open gym for kids aged 8 – 18 every weekday from 2:30pm – 8pm.  News of a free basketball gym open every day quickly spread throughout the neighborhood and before we knew it we had 75 – 100 kids a day coming to the gym.  Two of those kids were twins Sebastian and Santana.  They were a lanky pre-teen brother and sister, in middle school at Westport Middle across town, even though they lived literally around the corner from the gym.  Sebastian loved basketball and Santana just loved hanging in the gym, talking with her friends…

A WEEK IN THE LIFE...

Even though school is out for the summer, and we had two weeks in between the time school ended and camps begin, things certainly did not slow down at Love City.  With many moving parts, below is a snapshot of how the week went for us last week.

It started Sunday night.  It was about 11:30pm and I woke up to Shawn on the phone with 911, directing them to the old Grace Lutheran parsonage house that we own.  It is located right next to the old Grace Lutheran church which is going to be the site of the new preschool.  We have been having problems with people trying to break in, so a couple weeks ago we installed a security system with cameras.  Shawn gets alerts to his phone whenever the motion detectors for any camera are triggered

I WASN'T EXPECTING THAT.. 

One week ago Thursday we finished our first full school year at Mighty Oak Academy.  One of the main things we talked about with our students and our staff throughout the school year is our goal of fostering a sense of school family.  School family infused everything we did, how we taught, how we loved the kids, how we handled melt downs and arguments, everything.  And just like in a real family we had our ups and downs throughout the year, but when it came time for the final day of school, I was unprepared for the kids’ reactions to leaving for summer break.

IT REALLY DOES ALL BEGIN WITH FOOD... 

Last Friday, after we had closed down Porkland for the last time as a restaurant, Shawn and Ethan were doing some final clean up in the kitchen and I sat by myself on the old pew from St Cecilia next to the order counter, taking in the now quiet space and remembering.  In my mind I could see neighbors, that had become friends, chatting with each other while waiting in line to order, business meetings taking place at the table in the corner during a busy lunch rush, kids playing with the pop a shot basketball game and climbing all over the half of a VW bug while their parents waited for their order to come to their table.  I thought back to how it all started and the power of food.  All the community that would take place every day at Porkland started when we unknowingly tapped into the history and tradition of food in the Portland neighborhood. 

THE LAST FULL WEEK OF PORKLAND... 

As we announced on Monday, this is the last week of Porkland as a restaurant.  Starting next week Porkland will transition to catering only.  We still hope to continue to see all our neighbors both near and far for the Love City Friday Fish Fry and BBQ on Fridays starting May 27.  While it has been a bittersweet week we are looking forward as we determine the next steps for the St Cecilia campus, and we are happy to still be able to welcome community on Fridays.  Be sure to come see us on Friday from 11am - 7pm.