The Pursells!

Have you ever been to The Habit? You know, that top-tier hamburger joint on the corner of Scott and El Camino in Santa Clara. Did you ever look at those fun, beachy paintings on the wall and think, “Gee whiz, wouldn’t it be swell to live there? I wonder what it’s like!”

Well go ahead and ask us, the Pursells. David and Sammy were born and raised in the very spot those pictures depict and The Habit started: Santa Barbara, CA. But that’s not where we’d call home now. For the last nine years the Bay Area is the place God has called and planted us and the place we love calling home. 

Currently, our family is made up of David, Sammy, Callahan (8), Remy (6), Croissant (cat), Empanada (cat), and Irwin (bearded dragon). As you can imagine our household is lively and energetic. We all love traveling and exploring nature, and camping has become a favorite pastime over the last few years. While indoors, we all can frequently be caught reading a good book, listening/dancing/singing to music, or enjoying our Friday Family Movie Night. 

We’ve been coming to Garden City ever since we moved to the Bay Area in the summer of 2014. Previously in Los Angeles we were attending Reality LA which we loved, but was so large that it was sometimes hard to find connection, so we knew we wanted a smaller church that was more intentional with community. We had intended to “shop around” a bit before committing, but we tried Garden City first. At the dreaded greeting time in our very first service, Art and Shayna Counts turned to us, found out we were new, and immediately invited us over for dinner that night. While we weren’t able to go that night, the love and welcome we felt from the church was exactly what we needed and we felt God telling us that no shopping around was necessary. Nine months later we found exactly why God had called us to plant at this church and in this community, as we were so wonderfully loved and cared for as we welcomed our first child, Callahan, into our lives.

The love and welcome we felt from the church was exactly what we needed, and we felt God telling us that no shopping around was necessary.

As our family has grown and God continues to plant us further into Garden City and the Bay Area, we’ve recently been blessed with buying a single family home in Santa Clara. It has been a dream of ours to have a little more space for out of town visitors, hosting life group, our growing children, and the ever increasing menagerie of animals (hermit crabs, a praying mantis, and a dog are next on the docket if you were wondering). We would value your prayers as we transition into our new home and we make decisions on how to plant into this new neighborhood and love it well.

Now that you’ve gotten to know us a bit, come say hi to us at church! You can spot David with a bass guitar, Callahan smashing a tetherball, Remy singing the worship song du jour on loop (just that one verse over and over and over again), and Sammy trying to wrangle us all together for the 20th time.