Ask an Author: Making Friends in a New City

This post is in response to a question we had about how to make friends in a new city.

We moved to Chicago about a year and a half ago. I didn't know anyone in the city and we don't have any family here. We were starting from scratch in the friends department.

The first and easiest way to make friends is to find a church family. The great church search can be really overwhelming. My advice here is to not just attend the morning worship service, but attend a Sunday School class from the very beginning. This really helps to meet people and to get a good feel for what life in the church family will be like. We started attending a church right away and I started going to the weekly ladies' Bible study the first week. This was a great way to meet other moms. We only went to the church for about 2 months before we switched to another church that was a better fit for us. But I kept going to the ladies' Bible study because I liked the moms. After the semester was over, I stopped going to the Bible study and started going to a Bible study at our new church. If I would have waited to start attending a small group until we were "settled" in a church family, I would have gone months and months without any other mom friends. Diving right in gives you a much better chance of making friends.

Another way to make friends is by getting your kids involved in community activities. I took Samuel to a weekly gymnastics class and met some moms that way. I took my kids to the park and chatted with the other moms. We started going to story time at the library. I was proactive in making friends. You may not be a natural extrovert, but if you can make a little effort to initiate a conversation and tell the other mom that you are new to the area, it goes a long way in making friends.

I know that there are networking websites out there as well that help organize mom groups. Meetup.com has a few, like this mom's group and this SAHMs group. Another website is RaisingThem.com. I don't have any personal experience with this, but it is another option.

The key is to just look around you as you go about your day to day business with your kids. There are plenty of other moms out there looking for a friend as well. We just have to be bold enough to say that out loud. As time goes by, some of these friendships have stuck and grown and some have faded away. But I'm thankful for the friends God is putting in my life and the ways He continues to challenge me through them.