Gospel Con Carne

It's always hard to say goodbye to a dear friend and neighbor in Community First! Village. This week's Gospel Con Carne guest, Cheryl Williams, has been part of the Mobile Loaves & Fishes family for more than four years. She moved to the Village after several years of being homeless, and is moving at the end of this month after having been re-connected to her family. While we are saddened to see Cheryl go, let there be no doubt that this is a wonderful celebration for us. Through her struggles with addiction and a loss of family, Cheryl says she found hope in her Community First! family, and ultimately by surrendering herself to God to live the life He has paved for her. Hear Cheryl's beautiful story of following God's call, which has led her to reuniting with her son and choosing to start a new chapter in her life.

From a brief time living in Kenya to working on projects in impoverished areas of Louisiana, Sarah Satterlee gained a firsthand understanding of the value of built environments that bring diverse individuals together. She also has a firsthand understanding of Community First! Village, now a 51-acre development in northeast Austin designed specifically for men and women coming out of chronic homelessness. Not only is Sarah the Staff Architect at Mobile Loaves & Fishes—the developer of Community First!—she also lives in the Village among its many formerly homeless neighbors. Hear how Sarah's experience serving in communities that truly know their neighbors has shaped her architectural mindset and created in her a desire to build "neighborhoods of knowingness" as we imagine future expansions of the most talked about community in Austin, Texas.

After living in Venezuela for three years as a teenager, this week's Gospel Con Carne guest Melissa Nicewarner Daly says she came back to the U.S. with a newfound level of awareness. Melissa has always had a passion for justice and building community, with a driving force of bringing people together and lifting people up. Realizing that there is no clear cut path for mitigating homelessness, Melissa and her team at HomeAid Austin are dedicated to creating equitable communities by partnering with other nonprofits to serve some of the most vulnerable men and women in our community. Hear how Melissa's journey of serving others has led to her role as Executive Director of HomeAid Austin where, among other projects, she and her team are shepherding the construction of eight tiny homes on Phase II of Community First! Village.

There's a hot August day back in 2013 that is chiseled into the memory of Alan Graham and his guest on this episode of the Gospel Con Carne, Ed Lundin. During a hearing before the Travis County Commissioner's Court on August 13, 2013, Mobile Loaves & Fishes received its first site development permit for Community First! Village. At the time, Ed was volunteering at a local church while following his call to serve the homeless. After years of ministry and serving as an ordained Episcopal priest all over the country, Ed met Alan during this particular site development hearing, and later became one of the first Missional neighbors at Community First! Village with his wife Judy. Listen as Ed reflects on all of the diverse communities that he has served over the years, but none quite as deep and diverse as the one he currently calls home.

Sherywnn Patton and Gospel Con Carne host Alan Graham are two men with vastly different upbringings and backgrounds, yet in recent years have found themselves collaborating in their work with a common goal in mind—bringing healing, dignity and reconciliation to men and women who need it most through the lens of the Gospel. In this episode, Sherwynn and Alan, along with guest host Amber Fogarty, unpack one of Mobile Loaves & Fishes' core values—that "all members of the human family are equal in dignity"—and explore its application and significance at a time of heightened racial tension in our country.

When Chad Zunker's NFL dreams were crushed by an All-American safety early in his college playing days at The University of Texas, he knew nothing of the journey that awaited him. In the years ahead, Chad's ambition turned to writing. Manuscript after manuscript led to a pile of rejection letters (he stopped counting after 1000), yet there remained a persistent nudging on his heart that told him to continue pressing forward. And then he was introduced to "the camp" deep in the woods of East Austin—a moment that would become a providential intersection in pursuit of his dream to become a published author. (Be sure to check out Chad's legal thriller, An Equal Justice, that is dedicated to Gospel Con Carne host Alan Graham.)

As our country continues to navigate a health crisis of unprecedented proportions, Gospel Con Carne host Alan Graham takes you back nearly 15 years to another significant event that drew Mobile Loaves & Fishes onto the front lines of a different kind of unprecedented disaster. When Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in August of 2005, MLF was still a young organization with only a few food trucks serving meals to the homeless in Austin, Texas. Although the hurricane disaster hit hardest more than 500 miles away, Alan and MLF Board Member Neal Nolan share why "not going was not an option," and how the organization's response during Katrina's aftermath unexpectedly became a defining moment for MLF in the years to follow.

As an only child growing up with divorced parents, Jessica Mitchell says her upbringing in Topeka, Kansas was normal by all accounts. Her journey to where she is today in Austin, Texas, however, isn't quite as straightforward. Jessica is a missional resident living in Community First! Village where she lives alongside and serves men and women who are coming out of chronic homelessness. Gospel Con Carne host Alan Graham describes her as nothing short of a blessing to the entire community. What you may be surprised to learn is what Jessica considers one of the largest blessings in her own life that time when U.S. Marshals came knocking on her door.

Gospel Con Carne host Alan Graham always loves to say that "behind every great woman, there's just a man." This is your opportunity to meet that great woman in Alan's life, his wife Tricia Graham, who has faithfully been by his side for nearly four decades. Tricia is the Director of Resident Care for Mobile Loaves & Fishes, and oversees the organization's daily engagement with the formerly homeless men and women who live in Community First! Village. She describes the recent several weeks of dealing with the COVID-19 crisis as an extraordinarily unsettling moment, but one through which she has continued to have a sense of peace knowing that—just like other difficult seasons of life—this, too, will soon pass.

Everything we do at Mobile Loaves & Fishes is about relationships and connecting with other individuals human to human, heart to heart. So as you can imagine, in this unprecedented time of social distancing due to the COVID-19 pandemic, our organization faces a challenging dynamic as we seek to continue growing community and building relationships with our friends who have experienced homelessness. In this episode of the Gospel Con Carne, you'll hear from Amber Fogarty, MLF's president and chief goodness officer, as she and Alan discuss the organization's response to the global crisis, how it has impacted our day-to-day operations, and why it's important that we all lean on faith as we navigate the coronavirus storm.