It's been ages since I last updated. Almost 3 weeks to be exact. It's been so busy and to be honest, I just haven't really felt like sitting down and updating my blog.
I can't believe how quickly the weeks are going by. It's already the staff's last week here. They leave early Sunday morning and then it's all left to us. We all take over leadership roles and they already announced our 4 student project leaders. If we don't have a job by this week, our job is to work in full-time ministry. I'm going to be volunteering at Covenant Presbyterian and working with the kids in their after school program.
If you remember Sunday's and Tuesday's are spent at our ministry locations, mine is Fountain of Life. I love it so much. Sunday services are so good. John is so easy and interesting to listen to. We go to the Family Center on Tuesday's and help out with whatever they need. The second Tuesday we helped clean out the garage at the Family Center. After that some of the kids showed up and I helped them do their Spanish homework. The third Tuesday we started a Mark Bible study and did that for the first two hours. The next couple of hours were spent helping out and doing whatever they needed and walking around the city and praying for the people and the community. The fourth Tuesday (yesterday) we had our 2 hour Mark study and then we went and handed out flyers for the Family Center. They are hosting a variety of different classes, Bible studies, and a VBS this summer, all for free. After handing out flyers we went down a couple blocks and walked around Wow Jam. It's this huge even that churches in the area host and they give out free food, bikes, groceries, and electronics.
Wednesday nights are our socials (aka parties). The Staff Hunt was the first social, the second was a volleyball tournament with pizza, the third was a movie night, and tonight we're going to be playing sardines at Cov Pres. If you don't know what sardines is, it's basically backwards hide-n-seek. Instead of everyone going and hiding and one person trying to find everyone...one person goes and hides and everyone else tries to find that one person. Once they find that one person, they hide with them and eventually most everyone will be hidden with that person. I'm pretty stoked. The church that we're going to be playing it in is huge so it should be really fun.
Saturday are our outreach days. For our first outreach we went to Huntington and went evangelizing on the beach. Our second one was giving out PB&J to the Homeless and talking with them. The third one was walking around the park and we had a booth set up for people to come write secrets down that they wanted to get rid of and put them in a trash can. This Saturday we're doing some kind of skit. I believe we have a Battle on the Beach coming up for the following Saturday. I'm pretty excited about that.
There have been so many good training sessions and great fellowship times and nights where a bunch of us just gathered and played guitars and sang worship songs. So many new friendships are developing and it's just amazing here. Please pray for continued growth in our relationships with Christ, dedication to our daily quiet times, continued community within the project and that the Lord would really allow us to become part of this city. Also, please pray for all of us students as the staff is about to leave us and we are going to be taking over the project as a whole. I love you all, hopefully I will update a little sooner next time :)
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Thursday, June 3, 2010
It's almost been two weeks!
Sorry, I haven't updated since Saturday. Today is Thursday and it's been an awesome week so far. I'll try and go through the days...
Sunday-we all went to our specific ministry locations for church. My group's church is called FOL (Fountain of Life). We had to leave the hotel at 7am...that was a little tough. So we got into two vehicles and drove to our church. I forgot to mention my church is located in Compton...so that's pretty awesome. I love my church here. There's so much diversity. There's all different kinds of people--rich, poor, blacks, asians, whites, and they all love each other. The feeling of community is overwhelming and they all worship so freely. We leave so early because the church is only 5 years old and they don't have a set location; they do church in a middle school so we go early to help set up and we stay to help tear down. This last Sunday was Family Sunday so we stayed for the potluck afterward and it was cool to sit and talk with some of the people. When we got back from church we just chilled until 3. At 3 the guys and girls split up and we had our girl bible study while they had their guy one. After that we had self-reflection and quiet time to ourselves for a few hours. That was really good.
Monday-I don't really remember the morning. Just the usual 8:30 morning group prayer. Then we probably got ready and went job searching. Monday night was awesome because it was our first Family Night. We had a slide show of pictures from the week, ate some Subway, did some worship, heard a testimony, and Bruce did a little lesson thing.
Tuesday-Tuesday morning we had Solarium Training at Cov Pres. Solarium is this awesome outreach tool that we'll be using. It's just a bunch of pictures you spread out and you ask someone if they will take a quick picture survey. They pick out some pictures that describe their life and you ask them questions and it's really neat. Tuesday afternoon we headed to our ministry locations. My group went to the FOL Family Center and learned a little bit about that. Then Red (one of the guys that goes to the church, he's probably about my age) took us on a tour of the area. He told us that he was an ex-gang member (he was a Crypt) but he got out of it and came to Christ. He was telling us that the kids get into the gangs when they don't really have family they can count on. They turn to the gangs because they are more like family than the kids' real families. He told us about the public park where they have a lot of gang fights and showed us a lot of tagging. Tagging is where the gangs mark their territory. We just walked around for awhile and went back to the Family Center. When we got back John Teeter ( the pastor of the church) told us a story about how a guy was killed at the liquor store across the street just because of tagging. The kid was only 22 and the guy shot him, point blank, in the head. John told us some more facts about the city and about the church and then we went to his house. We had a Bible study for a couple of hours and it was amazing. It was very interactive and just really good. Then we headed back to the BPH. I'm sure Tuesday night consisted of going to Yogurtland and hanging out around the hotel.
Wednesday-Yesterday we got up and had our 8:30 prayer and then went back to our rooms to get ready for the day. We were supposed to get ready and go out to look for jobs but my room got a little distracted and broke into a dance party. Eventually we got ready and Katie and I went to the Pike together to look for jobs. It was another day full of rejection and the famous "We're always accepting applications" line. We eventually made it back and chilled with our peeps until 6. So, I am part of the party planning committee and every Wednesday night we have a party (social as they like to call it) and last night was our first one. Last night we did a staff hunt. So we broke into 7 groups. Each group had one camera and 6 or 7 people. All the groups had the same list of things to do (my committee came up with these things) and so you have to go around town and do this crazy stuff and take pictures. One of the things is to find staff members around the city. Our staff was dispersed randomly throughout the city, but they were all in crazy costumes so you couldn't recognize them. Each thing was worth a certain amount of points, but finding staff was 500 points per staff member. So that was the main thing you wanted to do. Some of the things we had to do were get pictures--on a roof, in the ocean, in a fountain, jumping in front of Yogurtland, on a boat, in front of a mural. Then we had to take pictures of our team doing crazy things like--human jump rope, playing chicken in a store, wearing cowboy hats, giving a stranger a piggy back ride, picking a stranger's nose, eating a stranger's food, popping a stranger's pimple, kissing a dog, fitting our whole team in a shopping cart, wearing clothing of the opposite sex and other crazy stuff. If you haven't already go check out my Facebook pictures...I put all the pictures up of us doing that. Then we had to take some videos--of our team having a dance party on the bus and a team member eating a live fish. Only two teams actually did this (and one wasn't a fish, it was a live squid...nasty, I know). So we all had to be back by 8 and turn in our cameras. The winning team all got $5 giftcards to Yogurtland. My team came in 2nd place...we only lost by 20 points! The Staff Hunt was soooooo much fun. Then to finish off the night a group of us went to In-N-Out Burger...yum! Then when we got back we hooked up some speakers to someone's laptop and watched House. It was great. All together, Wednesday was a blast.
So like I said, today is Thursday and it's now 12:25. After my roommates and I get ready we're going to go get groceries and then look for jobs...again! But, I just heard someone shouting in the pool area that he got a job so this is good! Please pray for the rest of us (the majority) that don't have jobs. Pray that the Lord will open doors and provide us with opportunities to get jobs so we can be even more a part of the city. Also please pray for the relationships that are forming here and that we will continue to grow closer to Jesus as we grow closer together. I love you all and will try to update again soon!
Sunday-we all went to our specific ministry locations for church. My group's church is called FOL (Fountain of Life). We had to leave the hotel at 7am...that was a little tough. So we got into two vehicles and drove to our church. I forgot to mention my church is located in Compton...so that's pretty awesome. I love my church here. There's so much diversity. There's all different kinds of people--rich, poor, blacks, asians, whites, and they all love each other. The feeling of community is overwhelming and they all worship so freely. We leave so early because the church is only 5 years old and they don't have a set location; they do church in a middle school so we go early to help set up and we stay to help tear down. This last Sunday was Family Sunday so we stayed for the potluck afterward and it was cool to sit and talk with some of the people. When we got back from church we just chilled until 3. At 3 the guys and girls split up and we had our girl bible study while they had their guy one. After that we had self-reflection and quiet time to ourselves for a few hours. That was really good.
Monday-I don't really remember the morning. Just the usual 8:30 morning group prayer. Then we probably got ready and went job searching. Monday night was awesome because it was our first Family Night. We had a slide show of pictures from the week, ate some Subway, did some worship, heard a testimony, and Bruce did a little lesson thing.
Tuesday-Tuesday morning we had Solarium Training at Cov Pres. Solarium is this awesome outreach tool that we'll be using. It's just a bunch of pictures you spread out and you ask someone if they will take a quick picture survey. They pick out some pictures that describe their life and you ask them questions and it's really neat. Tuesday afternoon we headed to our ministry locations. My group went to the FOL Family Center and learned a little bit about that. Then Red (one of the guys that goes to the church, he's probably about my age) took us on a tour of the area. He told us that he was an ex-gang member (he was a Crypt) but he got out of it and came to Christ. He was telling us that the kids get into the gangs when they don't really have family they can count on. They turn to the gangs because they are more like family than the kids' real families. He told us about the public park where they have a lot of gang fights and showed us a lot of tagging. Tagging is where the gangs mark their territory. We just walked around for awhile and went back to the Family Center. When we got back John Teeter ( the pastor of the church) told us a story about how a guy was killed at the liquor store across the street just because of tagging. The kid was only 22 and the guy shot him, point blank, in the head. John told us some more facts about the city and about the church and then we went to his house. We had a Bible study for a couple of hours and it was amazing. It was very interactive and just really good. Then we headed back to the BPH. I'm sure Tuesday night consisted of going to Yogurtland and hanging out around the hotel.
Wednesday-Yesterday we got up and had our 8:30 prayer and then went back to our rooms to get ready for the day. We were supposed to get ready and go out to look for jobs but my room got a little distracted and broke into a dance party. Eventually we got ready and Katie and I went to the Pike together to look for jobs. It was another day full of rejection and the famous "We're always accepting applications" line. We eventually made it back and chilled with our peeps until 6. So, I am part of the party planning committee and every Wednesday night we have a party (social as they like to call it) and last night was our first one. Last night we did a staff hunt. So we broke into 7 groups. Each group had one camera and 6 or 7 people. All the groups had the same list of things to do (my committee came up with these things) and so you have to go around town and do this crazy stuff and take pictures. One of the things is to find staff members around the city. Our staff was dispersed randomly throughout the city, but they were all in crazy costumes so you couldn't recognize them. Each thing was worth a certain amount of points, but finding staff was 500 points per staff member. So that was the main thing you wanted to do. Some of the things we had to do were get pictures--on a roof, in the ocean, in a fountain, jumping in front of Yogurtland, on a boat, in front of a mural. Then we had to take pictures of our team doing crazy things like--human jump rope, playing chicken in a store, wearing cowboy hats, giving a stranger a piggy back ride, picking a stranger's nose, eating a stranger's food, popping a stranger's pimple, kissing a dog, fitting our whole team in a shopping cart, wearing clothing of the opposite sex and other crazy stuff. If you haven't already go check out my Facebook pictures...I put all the pictures up of us doing that. Then we had to take some videos--of our team having a dance party on the bus and a team member eating a live fish. Only two teams actually did this (and one wasn't a fish, it was a live squid...nasty, I know). So we all had to be back by 8 and turn in our cameras. The winning team all got $5 giftcards to Yogurtland. My team came in 2nd place...we only lost by 20 points! The Staff Hunt was soooooo much fun. Then to finish off the night a group of us went to In-N-Out Burger...yum! Then when we got back we hooked up some speakers to someone's laptop and watched House. It was great. All together, Wednesday was a blast.
So like I said, today is Thursday and it's now 12:25. After my roommates and I get ready we're going to go get groceries and then look for jobs...again! But, I just heard someone shouting in the pool area that he got a job so this is good! Please pray for the rest of us (the majority) that don't have jobs. Pray that the Lord will open doors and provide us with opportunities to get jobs so we can be even more a part of the city. Also please pray for the relationships that are forming here and that we will continue to grow closer to Jesus as we grow closer together. I love you all and will try to update again soon!
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