Hospitality Challenge Testimony

The Erkelens - Using Hospitality To Have “Family Night With More Than Just Our Family”

This month we launched our 2020 Hospitality Challenge. To learn more about this year’s challenge, Read this post. The month of February presents a fresh opportunity for you to extend hospitality toward another one of your neighbors.

Read below for an example of how one family in the church - the Erkelens - used their home and a meal to build a relationship with a neighbor in January:

In theory, we love inviting friends over to share a meal. I love to cook, and when I was single and then  as a newly married couple, we had people over for dinner at least once a week.  In the nitty gritty of family life with homework, kids schedules, and late night lesson planning, hospitality now often gets pushed to the back burner.  The hospitality challenge gave us a tangible goal – to free up one night of the month and make it a priority to open our home. We took the opportunity to get a date on the calendar with a couple that we have been trying to get together with for 5 months.  We were a little concerned because our kids get very jealous when we cancel “family night” to do something else.  This couple doesn’t have kids, but our kids love them.  We had dinner, put on a pot of Moroccan mint tea, and played Uno way past our kids’ bedtime.  It was family time with more than just our family, and this time our kids weren’t complaining. Now they are joining in the excitement of the hospitality challenge and suggesting who we should invite next.