The Blogger Union has partnered with CreativeMornings/Miami for a collaborative storytelling marathon. Tune in to read the story of our city told by local creatives, bloggers and entrepreneurs. Each week, a different member of CreativeMornings will take over to post what inspires them about South Florida. Do yo want to take over the CreativeMornings/Miami blog and share your take on our community? Email Paola atinfo@thebloggerunion and we’ll get working on it!
Pascal Depuhl is chief mind changer at Photography by Depuhl, a Miami-based visual content creation company. It’s common to find him in the mountains of Afghanistan or the jungles of South America and it’s just as common to walk away from the visual content he creates with your mind changed.
To get a glimpse of what’s going on in his mind check out his blog.
Robert
looks more like a hit man, than a pastor and he’ll be the first person to tell you. He’s also one of the very first people I met working on fashion photo shoots in Miami, as I started coming down to South Florida in the mid 90’s to escape the winters in Chicago and New York (for obvious reasons).
If you’re looking for the soul of Miami, look no further than Robert and his wife Elizabeth, who have dedicated their lives to serving the people of Miami. You won’t find someone with a bigger heart for Miamians, than these two.
The church Robert pastors is called Calvary Chapel Miami Beach, a non denominational church just north of 71st Street on North Beach, a block west of ‘O’ Cinema with a few hundred parishoners. It is one of the most diverse places I know in Miami in regards to pretty much every metric you want to look at from old to young, from fashion models to the homeless and every color under the rainbow and the only thing these people have in common is the love that these they have for the inhabitants of the Magic City.
Photo credit: Photography by Depuhl
The house of worship also never seems to close with 5 services on Sunday (one is completely in Spanish) and there’s always something going on in this place, but it’s not just inside the building. It blows my mind how much impact this little place has with it’s community outreach–locally and globally:
Globally Calvary Chapel Miami Beach sends out teams to help with construction, education and medical missions in South America, Africa and other places - in the photo below, Robert is letting the congregation know that Dave (one of the top orthopedic surgeons in the US) and his wife Pam are moving to Nairobi, Kenya to work at a hospital for the next few years.
Photo credit: Photography by Depuhl
Here in Miami people who attend this church visit nursing homes and prisons, feed the homeless, do food drives every day of the week, work with victims of human trafficking, teach english as a second language, make up a large part of the ‘God Squad’ - which helps the city of Miami Beach keep the peace during Urban Beach Week. Calvary holds a pretty cool sunrise service on the beach every Easter in addition to teaching children, youth and adults about Jesus, who died, but didn’t stay buried …
Robert also serves as one of the chaplains for the Miami Beach Police Department and even the cops don’t seem to mind, that he looks like a hit man than a man of God.
