Feeling It

So, on the Fourth I did see fireworks, from a rooftop near the river. FUN! I’m glad I did, otherwise it wouldn’t have felt like the Fourth. About half of my track was at this apartment building because a friend had invited us over. We ate beef hotdogs, kettle chips, and chocolate chip cookies on the roof and Catch Phrase followed. After the fireworks show ended, we waited a while to leave because there were SO many people leaving Hudson River Park after having watched fireworks. The next day we started our next ministry site.

My team’s ministry site this week was at Here’s Life Inner City. This is the Inner City ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ. Here’s Life comes alongside already existing ministries and equips them with tools and resources. The first day at the ministry site (Monday) we were preparing dinner bags. Monday night our whole project (less than 200) did a homeless outreach in Manhattan. To prepare for that our team and thank goodness another team (11 people total) prepared the dinner bags for that night. 500 pb and js. 180 handwritten cards. 250 sacked meals. One God who loves grandly. Without having the other team with ours I know we would have not completed the task, so I am thankful they ended up being with us. That night we set out in different teams to distribute meals and love the homeless.

I went with a couple people near 55th and Lex. Throughout the couple or so hours we were there, we spoke with a couple men and offered them food. One desired so much to speak with someone that we barely got words in to respond and he didn’t respond to us asking questions. Another man conversed with us and had a lot of wisdom to offer. Two very different men, but both needing attention and love from people. Don’t ignore the homeless, they are people and they are not who you think they are. We made sure to give out the rest of the food we had on us before stopping at a store to get a little snack. That night we made rootbeer floats at a friend’s place and considered the experience we had had.

The next day it was back to the ministry site, we worked in the Warehouse and in the office, moving and organizing many various things. It was hot sometimes and hard work. We all kept going though and helped how we could. Tuesday night we had our action group time, which is essentially bible study. We continued to discuss God’s love for those in poverty. Additionally, how God desires and expects people to have compassion on one another:

“If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.” Philippians 2:1-4

At the end of the meeting, our leaders said some suspicious things and everyone begin to question what was going to happen next. They said we would have a meeting the next morning at 6 a.m. on the roof of the building. All the people on my track begin discussing what could possibly be the reason and some begin to get nervous and anxious. There were rumors which I tried to disregard until I knew the truth. The next morning I got up at 5:30 a.m. to get ready for the day because I didn’t know what was coming. Once I got to the meeting, we were given a sheet of instructions and told to get three things from our room in fifteen minutes—we were starting a poverty simulation. I went upstairs chose my three items: pillow, mouthwash, and a bag in addition to our allowed items: bible, journal, pen, metrocard, and a water bottle. When we returned to meet our staff they took our keys and our cell phones (we could change our voicemails) and told us we were not residents of our building until further notice. We were given fake $20 and told we had some decisions to make. Here’s some of our choices: $6/meal, $4/shower, $2 to sleep on a warehouse floor, $1/transportation (per bus or subway ride), $3 for our clothes, $9 to sleep on carpet and so on. As can be seen from some simple math---there was no way we could afford everything not even all three meals and that was the point. That first day we had to travel to our site by subway so that was $1 (although some teams had $4 in expense!), I bought one meal-dinner, and I also decided I would sleep on the floor. I gave $1 to someone and saved the rest. We were kicked out at 7 a.m and we had to be at our ministry site at 9:30…so needless to say we had quite a bit of time to sit around. So, our track sat outside of the building till it was time to leave because we didn’t have money and we had no place to go.

Our team got tired of waiting outside of our residence so we decided to head to our ministry site early. It was our third day at the site and we waited outside for a while before the director of the ministry kindly let us in the building. He knew what we were experiencing and going to experience so he had compassion on us during the simulation. Our team worked the warehouse that day, through the heat and the humidity while lifting, pushing boxes and objects. It was not long until we became tired. The morning time went fast and it was time to have lunch. However, I had not bought a lunch! I was expecting to go without; I had not had breakfast. Remember the homeless outreach I mentioned before? Well, there were some leftover supplies, so the director with compassion and without prompting bought our team a loaf of bread and I had lunch! Oh the thankfulness. I would have continued to work on an empty stomach otherwise. After finishing our afternoon slot of organizing the warehouse, we were kicked out of the ministry site at 4. We had to be back at 5 to check in and then wait until 6 to go in. The good part was our whole track got to spend quality time together that way! Even though we were hot, tired, hungry, and resting on the public sidewalk…some were even sleeping. As we were brought into a room for dinner, there were three distinct areas set up: a big bowl of rice krispies with cups on the floor, spaghetti, meatballs, Snapple’s, cheesecake and then another area with sandwiches and chips. People randomly chose cards and I received a card entitled “low income”.

The staff explained to us that these different meals symbolized the inequality of food distribution around the world—not because of a lack of food, but a lack of sharing. I was blessed that earlier that day the director for my site had supplied lunch otherwise that day I would have only had a Styrofoam cup full of rice krispies. Totally a God thing that I didn’t have to be as hungry. After dinner I was really tired from the lack of sleep and work so while my track was socializing, I was relaxing/going in and out of sleep. Around 9, the staff told us the lights would be going out in five minutes and so everyone scrambled to get ready. The staff had removed a clock and any other source of time that we had available to us. If people had left their things in the room, staff would steal it (to recognize that items get stolen at homeless shelters). So, someone lost their pillow and another had their shoes taken. We all slept on the floor and while we were trying to sleep staff would come in and ring bells, set off sounds, and turn on the lights. (At least because of the heat we got to sleep in the office otherwise we would have slept on the warehouse floor). I feel blessed because I am a deep sleeper and once I was further in sleep those things while they woke me up, did not wake me up completely. Unfortunately for my project friends some of their sleep was completely disrupted (the noise making simulated feelings of discomfort and noise that exists in shelters). Everyone either had their stuff near them or underneath them for fear of having it stolen; I put my knapsack on backwards so that it would not get taken.

At 4:30 A.M. staff came in and told us—you have an hour left to sleep. They awoke us an hour later and stated we had five minutes to get our things from the room and fifteen to get ready. They then distributed the money and food for the day after we had finished getting ready; we were forced out by 6 a.m. (Oh, I also lost $10 that day…good thing I had saved some from yesterday). Our team had over three hours before we needed to be to our ministry site! We hung outside, resting on park benches and sidewalks; we frequently fell asleep. By 9 in the morning we were let into our site—ready for another hard day of work in the warehouse. Actually, under normal circumstances it probably would have been fine, but our team was tired and hungry so it was difficult to function. We were moving many heavy objects as well as organizing items. However, the director was gracious and allowed us a long lunch and to finish early to rest. What if this had been real life though? We would have had to work our full shifts—relying on God to make it through more than we had. Like the previous night, we had to wait around for two hours to get back into the building.

I had not paid for dinner that night so I had to wait around a little longer. The director of our ministry site was speaking to our group that night, but everyone seemed distracted and had a lack of interest. After hearing more about why some staff had decided to work in the inner city we were told we were going to do the “Homeless Survival Hunt”.

I will explain this experience and more on the simulation in the next entry (from Thursday night and on)! Please continue to pray for us: for passion for those we are serving, for energy, to keep focused on our reasons for being here-not home, and for us to share the love of Christ.