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