Gospel Con Carne

Community First! Village is a place where men and women from different walks of life find restoration and healing, and our Missional neighbors play a vital role in this process through intentional relationship building. Christina Hite and her husband, Dustin, have been living in the Village missionally for almost a year. Although they've never personally experienced homelessness, the Hites have a deep understanding and connection to our formerly homeless neighbors who have been a part of several broken systems. After deciding to foster children, the Hites started a family with their now adopted daughters and have shared their hearts for ministry with their girls in many ways. Living in Peoria, Illinois with no intention of moving, a tour of Community First! Village in 2019 changed everything. After a lengthy season of discernment, the Hites moved to Austin with their daughters to live full-time alongside formerly homeless men and women who are healing from the ravages of the streets. Hear their compelling sto

As a budding songwriter in Nashville more than 30 years ago, our guest on this week's podcast, Vernon, once felt like he had it all. He wrote songs for Keith Urban and also had several other number one hits on the country music charts. And then, things changed. When friends in the music industry started disappearing and checks started getting smaller, Vernon entered a decades-long downward spiral of heavy drug use and spent years living on the streets. Just when he thought he had hit rock bottom, Vernon met his wife, Helen. The two have both overcome drug addictions and continue to pursue their passions in music and art, respectively, while living together in Community First! Village. Hear their journey of restoring relationships and walking away from drugs together, as they continue to see God show up in their lives. 

As a missional neighbor in Community First! Village, this week’s guest on the Gospel Con Carne podcast, Lori Nava, lives and serves alongside our neighbors coming out of chronic homelessness. In this episode, Lori shares her personal experience with the loss of a relationship with her father and the empathy this has given her for the many traumas our formerly homeless neighbors living in the Village have endured. She also shares her experience as a young, single woman living in the Village, and the sense of security she feels living amongst her neighbors. Lori also reminds listeners about the value of community and that, regardless of our backgrounds, we should never let our brokenness define us.

After thinking she had lost every family member she had ever known and loved, everything changed when this week's guest on the Gospel Con Carne podcast, Leatha, received a Facebook message from a man saying he was her father. For more than a decade, Leatha thought her father was dead, and she had been alone. After living on the streets for almost four years, Leatha's father, Gary, helped her move into Community First! Village where they now both live and earn a dignified income working on the farming team. Learn more about Leatha and her incredible journey—one that involves a second chance to change her life through a connection she thought was gone forever. 

Many of the men and women we serve at Mobile Loaves & Fishes, whether living on the streets or in Community First! Village, suffer from mental health illnesses. This week on the Gospel Con Carne podcast, Alan has a conversation with Chris Roubieu, the program manager at Integral Care who works directly with our formerly homeless neighbors in the Village who struggle with mental health disorders. During this Mental Health Awareness Month, Chris shares his understanding that everybody, regardless of their background or life circumstances, has their own struggles. He also encourages listeners to strive to find a deeper level of empathy for individuals who are mentally ill by trying to see the world through their eyes.

On this week’s episode of the Gospel Con Carne podcast, Alan is joined by Community First! Village’s first formerly homeless resident, Sam. In 2005, Mobile Loaves & Fishes lifted Sam up off the streets of Austin and moved him into what was our first RV through our Community First! program -- at the time referred to as 'Habitat on Wheels.' Now, 16 years later, Sam is living in the Village where he is working on several projects connected to his passion for engineering, geology and photography. Hear Sam talk about the adventures he has been on sparked by his interest in God’s creations, including photographing some incredible scenes that have been used in weather reports on the news! Above all, Sam shares the importance of following God’s call to discover the gifts He has given each of us.  

As the current dialogue around homelessness in Austin continues to intensify, Mark Hilbelink, lead pastor of Sunrise Community Church in Austin, joins Alan on this week’s episode of the Gospel Con Carne podcast for a hope-filled conversation around serving our friends who are struggling to survive on the streets. On a daily basis, Sunrise Community Church welcomes and serves many men and women who are experiencing chronic homelessness, and through Sunrise Homeless Navigation Center, provides resources to help support our homeless neighbors. Tune in as Alan and Mark discuss the importance of meeting people where they’re at through the shared experience we all have with brokenness.

We are so excited to kick off season four of the Gospel Con Carne podcast with our well-known Community First! Village neighbor, Billy "Shorty" Joe—a man who carries quite a large presence around the neighborhood. No stranger to the streets, Shorty spent more than 30 years homeless in Austin before making his way home to the Village in November 2016. Although he was homeless himself, Shorty spent many of his years while on the streets focused on serving his fellow brothers and sisters who were looking for warmth and safety. To this day, Shorty’s servant-hearted spirit has prevailed as he has stepped up to serve his community on a regular basis. With a heavy heart from many recent losses, Shorty shares his wisdom in trusting God’s perfect plan for each of our lives.  

We're excited to wrap up this season of the Gospel Con Carne podcast with our friend Chris Baker, founder of The Other Ones Foundation. In the midst of Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week, this conversation between two guys who have been serving men and women living on the streets of Austin for many years comes down to a simple approach toward healing the broken—just loving on people. Hear Chris talk about his childhood and what he feels could have easily led him to being chronically homeless himself by the age of 20 if he didn't have people in his life to support him. You'll also learn more about the servant-hearted work Chris leads with The Other Ones Foundation and his desire to be in fellowship with the men and women who need it most. 

This week’s Gospel Con Carne guest, D’Juan Davis, has learned a lot about leading and serving over the course of his life. He also exudes these two qualities every day as a member of Mobile Loaves & Fishes' culinary team in Community First! Village. Over the past several months, the culinary team has stepped up for their fellow neighbors by cooking and preparing fresh lunches daily. On the outside, the culinary team demonstrates hard work and compassionate customer service. Inside the kitchen doors, however, there’s much more going on—there’s a family. Hear D’Juan’s journey and the advice he once received from a friend living on the streets that led him to finding home in Community First! Village. This advice, along with the many lessons D'Juan has learned, have taught him that “blood is what connects us, but love is what makes family.”

We're celebrating volunteers this week at Mobile Loaves & Fishes, and our guest in this Gospel Con Carne episode is among the longest-serving volunteers to bless our organization! Host Alan Graham often talks about the powerful impact of an individual's halo in helping to grow Mobile Loaves & Fishes into the organization it has become since its founding 22 years ago. Mary Lou Batlan and her husband Bob have seen firsthand the halo effect in action. Mary Lou and Bob’s interfaith marriage has brought both the Methodist and Jewish communities together under the goal of serving our homeless and formerly homeless friends. Serving those in need connects people in profound ways, and the Batlans have played a major role in bringing together different groups of people across the broader Austin community into a lifestyle of service. Hear some of the many memories Mary Lou shares in this Zoom interview from her time volunteering with MLF and the beauty of people coming together to be the hands and feet of their

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.