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(Ennie Hickman) I think for Cana and I, about ten years ago, we really felt a specific call
to living life in the ordinary in a way that reached people.
— (Cana) And what gifts has he given us too, you know, just in life,
what are the gifts? How do we love well? And what does that look like?
— So I remember this experience of my son asking me if we could meet our neighbors.
"My teacher said that we need to love our neighbors."
It just struck me so deeply that when we asked this question, Well, who's our neighbor?
Yeah, of course, everybody is our neighbor, but I'm not going to be able to meet everybody
but my actual neighbor neighbors, we can love.
— We can get to know. — We can get to know.
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In this suburban neighborhood, it was almost impossible.
People enter their driveways and shutting the garage doors.
And if a neighbor's to reach out, it's because they want something from you.
—Yeah, when he said those words, "can I meet my neighbor," I just remember thinking like,
"I don't even really want to get to know my neighbors."
— We shut up. We get in the line at the grocery store and we don't say hello to people.
We've forgotten just to say hello, to say hi.
All of a sudden, you're in a conversation and then you say,
"You know what? We've got this dinner that we have every Friday night.
I know this is crazy, but you have kids and we've got kids
and man, it would just be great to come over
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It started on Wednesday nights and they intentionally were "we will be out there"
Come and join us—five o'clock. We'll be out there
and you can stay as long as you want and it sort of freaks people out at times
because they're like, "Wait. No, wait. Anytime?" — "What time again?" (laughing)
— "I can stay—what do I bring?"
Bring something to share.
So around five o'clock, people will just start walking in.
We will pray before the meal—that's the only clue that we're Christian or Catholic,
is that we're praying—and then from there, people come and go as as they wish.
— Our neighbors are invited.
I think most of them on this block know that they're invited every single week.
— They used to think we sold Amway. — Yeah! (laughing)
— We were like, "Come down, come play, come have a meal with us,"
And they're like, "What are you selling?"
I mean literally because it's just strange. We don't do this in our society.
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(Ennie) This place was all grass, P.S., and (laughs) just the neighbors that would come
and the folks that would come back here, we literally (together) destroyed the grass.
I mean that's how many people were looking for a home, looking for a place to call their own
— Yeah, we just want to share a life with people because life is really beautiful
and it can be really beautiful and I think the beauty of life is revealed more in communion with others too, you know?
So, I will say that almost on a weekly basis, I'm like, "Why? Why are we doing this again? This is crazy."
Without fail, regardless of how much anxiety I might have before the night starts, there is always fruit.
I always am, "I'm so glad we did that. Thank you for reminding me that this is worth it."
— It makes us better because we are loving in a way that is self-sacrificial,
from people meeting here and getting married, to out-of-towners who need a place to find a community,
to folks of other religions that have come and joined us and now have become Catholic,
Like, just, I mean the stories are endless and really, in a beautiful way, we are not producing that.
God is.
We're just sort of opening up the floor for God to do what he's gonna do through us
and as long as we're intentionally loving everybody who comes in here and they feel welcomed
and they feel like we're for them, I think that God has really worked through this.
And so, I don't know where we mistook or what turn we took in the Church
where evangelization meant that we were just proclaiming truth.
If I just say it more or say it differently with a different spin or tell a funnier story—
— Louder. — but some, louder, yeah, or with more signs.
The Pope says it great, that the Church grows not by proselytizing but by attraction.
It really is. There's no better school of evangelization than actually meeting people who are not like you.
We drive past people who are not like us to go to a place
to hear about a guy who reached people who were not like him
and who wanted nothing to do with him.
And I feel like we take on the image of Christ
when we go out of our way to meet people who are not exactly like us, you know?
And so, I truly believe that if there was a dinner on every block in the United States, we'd transform culture.
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