NYC Group Pics from Top of the Rock

Hey guys!

Here are the group pics I promised you.

PK

NYC Group Pics from Top of the Rock

NYC Day 5 ... Tuesday Night

Well, tonight we had a great time together. First we had a talent show. What a funny group of students! Several of the boys wrote and performed their own songs about team members and themselves. It was quite entertaining. They also did Irene, and some of them even learned our drama "Everything" in about 20 minutes. They did really good for having just learned it! Stan and I did an improv of Carmen Moix and John Long. Stan was Carmen and I was John Long. We had three judges with us ... Simon, Paula, and Randy ... I mean, Stan, Mama Muller, and John Long. Simon, I mean Stan, said Carmen & John were the hands-down winners, but he was overridden by the American public who, in an unprecedented move, awarded Corey the MC the award for the best performance of the night! Congrats to Corey! It was good times.

Following the talent show, we took about 30-minutes and shared a lot of testimonies. It was great to hear the team begin to unpack and verbalize what God has been showing them and teaching them through this experience. As always, I reminded this team that missions is not meant to be a week-long deal, but a lifestyle that we are to embrace on a daily basis. Everyday we have opportunities to love and serve God by loving and serving others. We then had a beautiful time of worship and prayer.

After our time together honoring and thanking Jesus for all that He has done in and through us, we headed down to the basement for Pastor Anna's famous Death by Chocolate desert. It was delish! We only lost three students to actual death by chocolate, so not too deadly this time! lol

On a good but sad note, I called the Fowlers to check on Katie this afternoon. The bad news for us was that she was not going to be coming back out to rejoin us. The good news is that her injuries did not require stitches or any further treatment. This was my inclination, but due to the fact that her fingers were still bleeding pretty good 12-hours after the incident, I knew I would feel better if a doctor made the final call and not me. The team misses her and is praying for her.

Tomorrow morning we will get up, pack, eat, and begin our journey home. The good news on this front is that I was able to have the church van brought down here, so we are having John Long drive our luggage to the Ronkonkoma train station so that we don't have to haul it all back up and down the stairs in the stations. Everyone is super happy about this, including my sweat glands! lol

See ya tomorrow!

Much Love,
PK

NYC Day 5 ... Tuesday Night

NYC Day 5 ... Tuesday

This morning we were up bright and early. After breakfast we got on the train and headed up to the Bronx to work with the NYC Relief Bus. We served hundreds of people hot soup, bread, and iced tea. Some of the team gave out literature about clothing, shelter, and food distribution. Others gave out tracts and Bibles. Still others walked down the block picking up trash from the sidewalk. My daughters and some others did face painting for the children. Still others helped to distribute clothes to women. Adriana was quite helpful during this time translating for those who spoke Spanish. Teresa and Steve (an employee of the NYCRB) spent quite a bit of time talking to a lady who was a heroine addict about getting into a rehab center. The students also had many opportunities to pray for various individuals - many of whom were alcoholics, drug addicts, prostitutes, and some who had just been released from prison. I met and prayed with a man from South Africa who was just released from Immigration Detention in Louisiana where he had been for 2 years. We were able to get him a few small bag of clothes that someone found on the bus (a blessing, because, as I mentioned, it was women's clothes on this day) and give him some leads for employment, more clothing, and shelter. Before we left we prayed for the staff of the bus and asked God to continue to use them to manifest His love. When we got home, everyone was pretty whooped. We are having some down dime before dinner. Afterward we are planning to have a time of sharing, worship, and prayer.

NYC Day 5 ... Tuesday

NYC Day 4 ... Monday

Today was our day off, so I let the team sleep in a bit. We woke up at 9am and had breakfast at 10am. After breakfast I was cleaning up when a couple of kids came running down frantically saying that Katie had cut her fingers on a large fan. I went upstairs where Katie was in the bathroom running cold water on her fingers. As soon as I walked in she said, "I'm fine." However, her fingers were bleeding quite a bit, so I quickly called for the First Aid kit. As I looked at her fingers I saw that she had cuts on two of them. On one finger were three good cuts, but as far as I could see they did not appear to be deep enough to warrant stitches. Her other finger had been skinned pretty good and a piece of her nail had been cut off. Again the cuts didn't look to be very deep, but I am sure it was painful having the sensitive skin under her nail exposed. After cleaning and bandaging her fingers, I called Katie's parents to let them know what had happened and what we had done. I told them that I would change her bandages in the evening and see how it was looking.

After all of the commotion we gathered together for a time of group devotions. I shared about humility and the reality that no one and nothing is below us as we serve Jesus. We then took some time to get into groups and pray for each other. After our time, we grabbed our bag lunches and headed to the train station.

When we got off the train, we all got to meet Josh the intern's brother Joe. For those of you who do not know, I used to babysit Joe and Josh when they were 5 and 3 years old respectively. We then spent about 3 1/2 hours in two groups venturing through Times Square. The biggest hit for most of the kids seemed to be the Toys R Us store. We also hit up the M&M store, the Hershey's Chocolate store, Virgin Records, and, of course, Starbucks & McD's. At about 4pm we jumped on the train again and headed downtown to do some shopping in Chinatown. Everyone had fun and returned bragging about how good they were at dickering. However, Ady & I seemed to be the only ones who were granted access to secret rooms where they keep the good stuff. Ha Ha Ha! The girls and I got Adriana a purse for her birthday which is coming up on Wednesday. After an hour of shopping, we got on the M train and took that back to the church.

When we arrived Pastor Ron informed us that while we were gone the fire department had come by. Before you freak out, let me give you a little background. The day before we came, I called Pastor Ron and he informed me that the fire department had come by and didn't really like his 3rd floor setup. It's not illegal, and according to his architect, everything meets code and requirements, and is safe; but they just didn't like it. Therefore, we decided to have the girls (who normally stay on the third floor) sleep down in the sanctuary, and just use the third floor for changing and showering. This has worked out well, especially since the sanctuary had air conditioning! Pastor Ron announced yesterday in church that they would be installing another fire escape in a week so as to keep the powers that be happy, but it will cost $9,000 (if anyone would like to help them with this, talk to me and I'll give you their information to make a donation and bless this little church of about 30 people!). In any event, they came by while we were gone this afternoon and decided that they wanted the third floor completely shut off. This was a teachable moment for us, and one that I was able to point to one of the most important beatitudes of a missions trip: Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be easily bent out of shape! So, after dinner, everyone chipped in, and we moved all of the girls' stuff down to the sanctuary, and we also helped to clean up some areas that helped Pastor Ron look good when the fire department came back by this evening to see what kind of progress he had made. The work that we accomplished in one hour would have taken him a good day to do by himself, so we were glad to assist. Many hands makes light work.

When we were done cleaning up, I called Katie in so I could change her bandages. When I took them off, I was bummed to see that her fingers were still bleeding pretty good. My thought is (and, of course, I'm no doctor), is that the very sensitive skin under her nail is just traumatized. I am not sure what can be done, but I cleaned everything up again, and decided that I should call her parents to take her to the doctor to see if there was something more that he/she would want to do. So, Katie was picked up this evening by her parents. I am sure that she is crushed to be leaving the team, but hopefully the doctor will give her the OK to rejoin us tomorrow. Please pray that God will completely heal Katie's fingers!

This evening we also had a team meeting to debrief the day. After laughing about the Chinatown deals and the funny things we did today, we began to ask where we saw God's activity as we were just enjoying our day. One of the students brought up an encounter I had in the subway.
While we were walking to our train, a homeless man walking the opposite way of me asked me if he was getting on the right train to go to Brooklyn. I told him he was going the wrong direction, and needed to follow me. He did so. It was loud in the train station, but he was talking to me as we walked. He was missing his teeth, and this combined with the noise made it hard for me to hear him. Nevertheless, I acknowledged him, and continued to lead him to where he needed to go. He decided that rather than getting on the 6 train, he would come with me up to the M train. I mentioned that the 6 was below us, but he just seemed to want to talk to me, so I gave him my attention. As we talked, he shared that his name was Stephen. At first he was talking about seeing a celebrity using drugs somewhere. I noticed that he had on a Christian t-shirt, and I told him I liked it. He then showed me a tattoo on his arm that said "Jesus is Lord." I told him I liked it. We weren't far from the Bowery, so I asked him if he ever went to the Bowery. He said yes. He said that there was a couple sharing recently, and he just broke down crying because he knew that God was speaking to him. He then began to tell me about a time when he was shooting drugs on the beach when He felt - and I'm not filling in words here; these were his actual words - an overwhelming sense of the grace of God. He said he began to cry out to God that he was not worthy of deserving of God's grace. He said he felt like Moses when he wanted to see God, and God allowed him to see His back. He said God really showed him His love and grace in a powerful way.

I have recently began to ponder the deep truth that the image of God is inside of every human being. So many times we as Christians go to bring Jesus to people, but I am understanding more and more, that many times, we we bring Jesus to people, the image of God in them somehow speaks to us as Christians. If you have time, do some meditating in Matthew 25 where Jesus talks about whatever we do to the least of these, we do unto Him. Consider the idea of Jesus being inside of the least of society. It's a mystery. I haven't figured it all out yet. But I know God wants to say something to the Church about this.

We also talked about a homeless man we saw outside of Toys R Us who was cross-dressed with makeup on and dancing to music trying to make a buck. We all got a laugh out of the spectacle. But I asked our students to step back and consider what God might think of this guy - this guy who God had created in His image. What does God thing when he sees his son? How would God respond? I tossed out these and other questions along this line to get our students to understand the depths of God's love, compassion, mercy and grace. We also considered the reality that the same thing that is inside of this man which caused him to get out there and make a complete fool of himself for whatever reason, is inside all of us as human beings. But for the grace of God, there go I. Humbling. Sobering. Powerful.

Jesus, help us to see the world through your eyes. Give us Your heartbeat for the people that You gave Your life for. So Be It!

Tomorrow we are going to the Bronx to work on the NYC Relief Bus again. I am also trying to get us into the Bowery Mission, but I am waiting to hear back from a contact there.

Blessings,
PK

NYC Day 4 ... Monday

NYC Day 3 ... Sunday Evening

This afternoon we jumped on the train and headed into Manhattan. When we arrived, we split into two groups and each team hung out around 5th Ave. for a few hours. After that we met at Rockefeller Plaza and all wen to the Top of the Rock. We timed this perfectly so that we were able to get some good pictures while there was still some daylight, watch the sun go down, and see the city at night. It was a lot of fun! We spent a good hour on the top. If you have never been, it's totally worth it and way, way better than going on the Empire State Building (Why? Because when you're on the best building in NYC, you don't get to see the best building in NYC!). I highly recommend it! We then took the train home, arriving at about 11pm. We are able to sleep in a bit tomorrow because that's our full day off. We're going to spend most of our time in Times Square, and possibly go down to Chinatown. I am trying to see if we can do some work at the Bowery Mission on Tuesday afternoon and then go to Chinatown after that, but that's if they can get us a slot to work there.

Blessings,

PK

NYC Day 3 ... Sunday Evening