2025 Ministry Report
Dear Friends,
As we step into 2026, we can hardly believe we are celebrating ten years of showing up and loving people on East Colfax. A decade of presence. A decade of stories. A decade of God’s faithfulness.
Many of you know the beginning of this story: Shawn riding his motorcycle up Colfax, praying and asking God if this was where He was leading him and Diane. The answer was “yes” and they moved into the old Ranger Motel, where they lived for four years before buying a home in the neighborhood.
When my husband and I first learned about Jesus on Colfax eight years ago, it was through a friend who brought us to meet Shawn and Diane, see the Ranger, and walk through the little building JOC had just purchased. I’ll never forget that day. People were sleeping in the alley. A makeshift tent sat in the corner of the lot. And in the middle of all of it, I felt an overwhelming sense of home.
We joined Shawn, Diane, and the tiny team that was faithfully showing up in the motels week after week, building friendships with people who had been forgotten by most of the world. During COVID, when the city shut down and isolation deepened, one of the kids from the motels came to live with us for a few months. It was messy and beautiful and exactly what Jesus on Colfax is about: Rising together through relationship out of poverty of soul and circumstance.
After the pandemic, we opened our first Family Room at the Radiant Motel: a simple, small space where people could come inside, rest, find resources, eat, and feel human again. It filled up almost immediately. Soon we moved into 9360 E. Colfax to make room for the growing community. We began serving women who had been sexually exploited. We listened, we learned, and we kept showing up.
And then came one of the biggest steps yet: purchasing Jubilee Roasting Co. in 2024 and launching the RISE residential job-skills program because our community kept telling us, “We need a place to live. We need a place to learn. We need a chance.” This was a gift from Jesus. Matt and I had started a coffee roasting company in Wyoming when we lived there, with the hope of employing people who needed a second chance. When we moved to Denver, we sold it. Getting to be in coffee again and to use it for job skills training has been a kind gift from God.
Last month, in December 2025, we celebrated something we had only dreamed about a decade ago: seven graduates completing the RISE pilot program. Each of them stood up and shared how God had transformed their lives. Many have started jobs. All of them are stepping into a future they couldn’t imagine a year ago.
For ten years, we have walked with people through the ups and downs of life, the relapses, the victories, the heartbreaks, the baptisms, the reconciliations, the new beginnings. We have stood with our neighbors on their best days and their worst days, and we have watched God bring beauty out of places others had written off.
We give all glory to God for these ten years. And as we look ahead, we are filled with hope. The work continues. The needs are great. But so we hold hope that the best is yet to come.
With joy,
Kayla Horne
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