A Family Love Story
God's Love for Us
Jonerik began a relationship with Christ when he was a teen. He began attending clubs at Cornerstone Community Church and later knew that God was calling him to return to Kensington after college to share his love for Christ with others.
God's Love for Us
Jonerik began a relationship with Christ when he was a teen. He began attending clubs at Cornerstone Community Church and later knew that God was calling him to return to Kensington after college to share his love for Christ with others.
Emily met and fell in love with Jesus at a very early age. She met Jonerik while working at Victory Valley Camp for a summer. They both attended and graduated from Lancaster Bible College.
Three years later, they were married and living in Kensington, Philadelphia.
God's Love for our Family
About six months after we were married, Jonerik's sister was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. She was a single mother of three. She loved the Lord and trusted in his plan through the pain and in 2011, Jesus decided to take her home. We loved her sweet children and readily welcomed them into our home along with his other sister's two children.
Our family grew from 2 to 7, literally overnight. God blessed us with all that they needed during each step of the journey. There is no brief way to summarize his goodness to us throughout this adventure other than to say He has been completely faithful.
We were told that it was possible we would never be able to have children of our own, but in February of 2014 God blessed us with a baby girl.
About six months after we were married, Jonerik's sister was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. She was a single mother of three. She loved the Lord and trusted in his plan through the pain and in 2011, Jesus decided to take her home. We loved her sweet children and readily welcomed them into our home along with his other sister's two children.
Our family grew from 2 to 7, literally overnight. God blessed us with all that they needed during each step of the journey. There is no brief way to summarize his goodness to us throughout this adventure other than to say He has been completely faithful.
We were told that it was possible we would never be able to have children of our own, but in February of 2014 God blessed us with a baby girl.
God's Love for our Community
Cornerstone Community Church is staffed by a wonderful group of people who have a passion for serving and sharing Christ. The staff is comprised of support-raising missionaries who are sent to share Jesus in a low income community. Our vision is to raise up a church body that would be self sustaining, but at this time it is only a vision. Because Jonerik was raised up for service in this church and this community, we trust God to provide for our needs in a unique way.
About Kensington
“To tell the story of Kensington is to tell of vanishing mills.
Vanishing Mills. Vanishing neighborhoods.
Simple pleasures of living close to your neighbors
gone forever, except held still in the hearts
of these tenacious few.”
“Voices of Kensington” Jean Seder
Kensington is a diverse neighborhood north of center city. It once was a flourishing neighborhood filled with factories specializing in textiles. In the 1950's the neighborhood start to feel the effects of de-industrialization as most companies moved out of Philadelphia.
“Between 1950 and 1980, an area of the city that's east of Broad Street, north of Northern Liberties, and south of Northeast Philadelphia lost 300,000 manufacturing jobs, a brutal hollowing out of a once-vibrant place,” states a researcher, Alfred Lubrano.
Decades later Kensington displays the after-effects of this sudden unemployment and other changes in the neighborhood. The corners are now peppered with drug dealers whose job market always seems to be secure. Prostitution, drug and alcohol addictions, and other heart breaking lifestyles are prevalent as the city and nation also struggle with high rates of unemployment.
Some statistics from 2000 for our zip code, 19134:
- 3.4 square miles held approx. 57,922 people.
- There were 3,499 vacant housing units.
- The median household income was $23,700.
- Only 53.4% of our people had a high school degree or higher.
- There were 4548 families that are living below the poverty level.
- There were 3,499 vacant housing units.
- The median household income was $23,700.
- Only 53.4% of our people had a high school degree or higher.
- There were 4548 families that are living below the poverty level.
In 2009, research was done in the First Congressional District, which included our neighborhood. Some interesting information that was learned includes:
- people ages 20 through 24 have a nearly 25 percent unemployment rate, workforce investment board calculations show.
- Only 42 percent of the city’s 11th graders can read at grade level. Among adults two-thirds are considered low literate and lack basic reading and math skills needed to get and keep a job, according to a report from the workforce investment board.
- 19% of individuals live in poverty
- 40% of children live in poverty
“At a time when more people in America are suffering from hunger, the First Congressional District is one of the hungriest, second only to the Bronx, N.Y., according to the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, an ongoing national poll done in conjunction with the Food Research and Action Center in Washington.
Meanwhile, U.S. Census data released in late September show that the district, with a poverty rate of nearly 29 percent in 2009, is among the 10 poorest in the United States, and poorer than any other district in Pennsylvania.”
-In the First District, however, childhood poverty was at 40 percent in 2009, eighth-worst of America's 435 congressional districts.
"It makes me feel like less of a mom not to have food," she says in her mother's North Philadelphia apartment, suddenly overcome by the hardship. Tears form in her eyes. "Every day, I walk into a brick wall. No bricks fall - there's no dust, no crumbling. Just the wall. It never moves."
-Alfred Lubrano, “A Portrait of Hunger” 
