Welcome to the Jesus Calling Podcast. Today we're spending some time with guests who know and

have experienced the importance of community and have first-hand knowledge of how it can be a lifeline to those

who feel disenfranchised and alone.

Our first guest is Kristen Shell, a writer and mom from South Texas.

Kristen tells us how her longing for community

led her to take a bold step in making her front yard

a gathering place for meeting new people.

My name is Kristen Shell, and I am the author of The Turquoise Table, Finding Community and Connection in Your

own Front Yard. Tony and I have been married for 20 years and we have four children. We live in Austin, Texas and when I'm not

sitting out front at the turquoise table I'm most likely driving carpool in

my money van. Where I grew up we used to play outside all the time. Our neighbors

all had kids our same age and it was wonderful. We'd spend every day after school

and all summer long outside and the only time we knew when it was time to come home was either it got dark or we were hungry and we knew it was time for supper.

My middle school is really when I can trace, you know, sort of God's working in my life.

I went to our regular school for middle school, which in Dallas was 7th and 8 and eighth grade but about three or four

weeks into my seventh grade year I got beat up in middle school by a bully. I didn't

have lunch money and she needed lunch money. I didn't have it and all I

know is that I was kind of thrown up against the lockers. I never knew her name and

but what that was it was sort of an exciting moment if you will not so much for me but for my parents my mom her mama bear instincts came out and so she took me out of school.

And a few weeks later, they realized, well,

we need to send Kristen to school.

And so they sent me to a neighborhood little private parochial

...