Concluding Thoughts on the Summer Mission Trips of 2011

Alright.  A long time ago I promised that I would finish up blogging about the stories of our last mission trip with the Junior Highers to Chicago.  I apologize that I am just now doing this but I am making a more concerted effort starting today to get back to blogging and reading!  So here we go!

JULY 26

The two teams headed out to their YMCA sites for the morning.  The kids at our site had a lot of fun this morning because they had one of those big blow up water slides to play outside with.  Of course any time I seemed to get near it an Epiphany teen mysteriously got wet.  Attempts were made to avenge but they soon discovered that I am indestructible.  

For the afternoon we took the "ethnic plunge" into Albany Park.  This is similar to a scavenger hunt.  We were given a list of things we needed to accomplish that would force us to immerse ourselves into the neighborhood cultures.  We had to do things like finding products in a store from other countries.  Find how many different ethnic restaurants we can find.  Talk with people about their cultural backgrounds.  See how many different languages we could find.  Buy a paper in a different language.  Along the way we met this one guy that I initially thought he was working on something that seemed like a part to a skateboard.  He noticed me looking at him out of the corner of my eye and called us over.  He showed us what he was doing.  He had what started out as a silver dollar that he was hitting with a spoon.  What was strange was that he did this over a long period of time and eventually transformed the silver dollar into a ring!  It was kind of crazy yet wild at the same time.  But he was very proud of his rings that he showed off for us.  

After that experience we headed out to the Ravenswood Community Services to help serve dinner.  This was a church that provided groceries and dinner for the poor in their community.  We started out by bagging groceries down in the pantry.  We worked fast and hard to get the job done quickly.  Then the teens helped to give out the groceries and serve the dinner.  It was a great experience.

Team #2 did several activities during the afternoon.  They did a "meet-a-need" activity where they were given $5 and they had to go out into the neighborhood to find someone and meet a need of theirs with the money.  They are also told to try and spend some time talking with the person and get to know their story.  Team #2 also served dinner at Cornerstone Community Outreach and then ate dinner at a Vietnamese Restaurant.  This is the team that Doug went with and of course, some of our most colorful stories have come from.  Apparently when they were driving through the city somewhere a very loud "pop-pop-pop" went off.  As the teens began to look around to see what the sound was, our awesome driver, Arlene Wise, very discretely with out making a scene, just put her foot on the gas to get away from whatever that noise could be.  Unfortunately, Doug did not take my class on how to be discrete in a potentially dangerous situation.  At the sound of the noise, according to many witnesses, he began looking around wildly declaring, "WAS THAT A GUN? DID I JUST HEAR A GUN?"  This of course, made the teens even more excited looking around like scared Barney Fifes.  Now, keep in mind, no one can confirm if they for sure heard a gun.  It could have been a car backfiring, a jackhammer, or any number of things.  There were police chasing someone, but no one in the van could confirm if they actually saw a real gun.  So myth busted.    

Team #2 had dinner at the Vietnamese restaurant and it did not get great reviews. My team on the other hand went to a Mediterranean restaurant and it was delicious!  We still have some teens freaking out about the food.  I won't mention any names but the initials of one of them is Rachel Mellett.  She did try some of the food so I had to give her credit for that I guess.  

After dinner we had our team debrief, took our showers.  I told the teens that we would be going through the letter to the Philippians for our morning devotions.  So they needed to make sure that they read one chapter a day and be ready to discuss it the next morning.  What was really cool was that Doug and I were talking church talk in my room while all the boys had some free time before lights out.  As we were talking, all of a sudden Doug hushed me and said to listen up to what is going on in our dorm.  As we eavesdropped, we listened to our one Senior guy, Max, reading out loud Philippians chapter 1 to all the boys.  This was an awesome thing to experience for me.  This was confirmation for me that this youth ministry is working!  Typically it is common to lose many of your Juniors and Seniors due to many factors.  One of them being the "been there, done that" attitude, which quite frankly, I can understand.  So I tell my upperclassmen that if they want to stay connected and not be one of those "drifters" then they need to learn to give back by actively finding a ministry and pouring themselves into it.  Max did a great job of modeling this.  It was one of those moments where I felt very proud to be a youth pastor to this bunch of teens.  They didn't even invite me or ask for my spiritual insights and THAT WAS JUST FINE WITH ME!  After that we all hit the sack.

JULY 27

We woke up, ate breakfast, made our lunches and had our devotions.  Each morning we had a different adult lead the devotions.  I did the morning before,  Doug did this morning and then the interns took the other two devotion times.  We all sat outside in an alleyway for our morning devotions.  It was a really good way to start the day off.  

Once we finished we headed off to our 2 YMCA sites.  Today I decided that Doug and I would switch groups so that he could spend a day with each one of the teams.  I headed off to the other YMCA.  I had the chance to bounce around from room to room and watch our teens assist and help with many of the early childhood groups.  There was also another mission group there under a different organization so I took some time to talk with them and find out who they were. Some of our teens did really well interacting with the little kids and some felt out of their element.  With one of the rooms that felt a little awkward, I went ahead and taught everyone the glorious game of "Honey, if you love me, won't you please, please smile?"  This broke the ice for everyone as you attempt to try and get someone to crack a smile by saying the above line to them.  

For lunch we decided to meet at one of the Chicago pizza places.  We decided on Lou Minalti's.  I have never had this pizza before but I can say that it was definitely one of the best!  It was soooooo delicious.  I highly recommend this if you ever head into the Chicago area. 

In the afternoon we all meet back at the main site.  Doug headed back to Loveland at this point.   The rest of us were split up into groups of 5 or 6 for a challenge called "Immersion".  Each group was given different instructions.  My team had to walk down to the corner and take the subway train into downtown Chicago.  We had the assignment to initiate conversations with people to find out their thoughts on homelessness in Chicago.  We headed off to an area with several small parks.  I sent the teens in groups of two so they did not overwhelm any one person with this mob of teens coming at them.  Our teens did a great job engaging people and learning about the city.  After some time we headed down to the park with the giant fountain.  We came across a man who was selling "The Onion" newspaper.  I bought one and the teens took it from there and talked with this guy for at least half an hour.  He voice sounded a lot like Denzel Washington.  We then proceeded to the "Giant Bean" park.  We sat down and tried to come up with a plan for dinner.  This was one of the challenges.  We had $2 for each person on our team and somehow we were supposed to come up with dinner for all of us.  We eventually ended up at a 7/11 and bought some nasty hot dogs and slushies.  That was dinner.

We then headed back for debrief.  At the debrief we processed all the different experiences each team had in learning about homelessness and trying to find food with so little money.  They were also challenged to not eat any snacks that night so that they really do feel hungry.  The teens got a lot out of this experience.  

JULY 28

We started out the day like usual: get up, eat breakfast, no bag lunches though because we had special plans for lunch, and then do group devotions.  Then we headed off to our YMCA sites, hung out with the little kids all morning and had fun with them.  

We then had a little time to waste so we headed to the Navy Pier for a few hours.  The teens all had a lot of fun exploring all the cool stuff there.  I, on the other hand, found the food court, got some food and sat down for a little quiet time just to enjoy the opportunity to sit down and relax for a few moments.  

Later in the afternoon we headed back to the North Park University campus for a dinner and program involving all of the teams with the Center of Student Missions for this week.  We were all taken out to their main entrance where there was a nice open area where they had the group play some goofy games.  After that we had a Mexican dinner catered in for the entire team.  After a delicious dinner we went to their theater hall.  There we spent some time in worship and sharing as we got to hear how other church groups were experiencing the city and their faith throughout the week.  We then got to hear a speaker that was simply amazing.  I can't remember the name of the speaker but her story blew everyone away.  Here is a single lady who felt that God was calling her to minister to one of the worst gang areas of Chicago so she bought a house in the neighborhood and just started reaching out to the gangs.  Her house has evolved into a place where all the kids in the neighborhood know they can go to for safety, help, support and encouragement.  She went through a list of teens and kids who have died from gang related violence and the extreme hopelessness that so many of them feel as a result of believing that they may die at any moment.  None of them think of a future.  As she explained the impact that her ministry is having, you could see how what she is doing is beginning to help open the eyes of these teens to believe that they can have a future.  Through her ministry she has been able to see God restore many of these teens into people with hope, faith, and love.  It was very, very powerful.  

We debriefed later that night, hit the showers and lights out!

JULY 29

Again, the morning went like clock work: wake up, eat breakfast, make sack lunches and do group devotions, then we head off to the YMCA sites for the final time.  It was another beautiful day so many of the kids enjoyed playing outside on the play ground.  It was during this time where two of the young boys were pushing each other around until one of them fell and hit his head on the steel frame of the fence going around the playground.  He opened up a gash on his head bad enough to have to call the paramedics and the police.  The boy would need a few stitches.  The other boy was hiding in the playground equipment thinking he was going to get arrested.  The YMCA staff were all apologetic and frustrated by the whole thing.  But it seemed to all work out.  Leaving was a little sad for many of our teens knowing that we will never see these kids again.  So there were a lot of goodbyes.  

In the afternoon the other team did their "ethnic plunge" while we while we did a prayer walk, meet-a-need, and served dinner at the Cornerstone Community Outreach.  The first event involved us going to a particular area of uptown Chicago where homelessness is the most visible.  We walked to a variety of sites where we would stop as a group and lifted up a prayer for the neighborhood.  At one point we came across the rather large mural painted on the side of this building.  It was a beautiful painting of Jesus.  As the story goes, apparently the local gang gave permission for a painting of Jesus.  And some of the gang members came down and helped with the painting.  The message and symbolism used throughout the mural was awesome.  

Meet-A-Need was the next activity.  The group was broken down into 3 smaller groups and we were give some money with the challenge to find someone who as a need and find a way to help them.  I thought I was quite sly in noticing a woman sitting along the sidewalk that we passed by about a block ago.  I took my team and quickly retraced our steps to go find that lady and see if we could buy here lunch.  Of course, when we found her she said some other group was getting her food at McDonald's but if I really wanted to get her something she would love some beef tips from the nice restaurant across the street.  I politely backed out of that and we found another person who was homeless.  We bought him some lunch and spent a little time talking with him.  Before he took off we also prayed for him.  After that we walked around and took advantage of opportunities to talk with people and invite them to dinner at the soup kitchen we would be serving at that evening.  

We then walked down to Cornerstone Community Outreach where we would be helping to serve dinner.  As we walked there we went down this alley that we were told was made famous by Al Capone and his gang.  It used to be called Blood Alley because you could not walk through it without getting blood on yourself from people getting whacked.  At the outreach we helped to prepare the food and then the people came in.  A couple of interesting things happened.  First of all, I love how hard working and fun our teenagers are when they are given just about any challenge.  This especially becomes apparent when you are working with teens from other groups who don't seen to be there for the right reasons.  Also, we encountered a lot of different types of people.  Those who were thankful for the food and very friendly and personable.  Others who were ungrateful, mean and just nasty about what they wanted and thought they deserved.  But it was a good lesson for our team to be reminded that when we serve, we do it for Christ.  People may be grateful or ungrateful.  It doesn't matter.  We don't serve to have someone pat us on the back and think we are great.  We serve in obedience to our faith.


That night we went to dinner at Silver Seafood.  It was an amazing Chinese restaurant.  We ate a lot of family style portions of many, many things that tasted so delicious!  Right across the street and down from where we were at, the speak-easy that Capone always hung out at was visible.  


We headed back to our campus and had a time to debrief with our CSM leaders.  It was a good time to process all that we learned throughout the week and how it can apply to our lives and change our perspectives on how we see our world.  


After that it was time for showers and lights out.  But being the last night and all, I knew that the Junior Highers over the past few days were getting themselves all tense about practical jokes.  In fact, just a couple nights ago I laid down the law that they needed to relax on the practical jokes.  But being the last night and all I did not want to end this week with the reputation of the big party-pooper.  So I thought if I could manage to control a simple, harmless, non-destructive practical joke, then the boys won't label me!  So I recommended that we go up to the girls dorm, open up their door, and then yell as loud as we can, and run back.  They were very happy that I threw them a bone so we quietly scaled the stairs up to their main entrance.  Just as we were about to open the door one of my junior high boys decided to drop his shorts so that he only had on boxers.  With a very perplexed look on my face I asked him what the heck he was doing.  He responded back to me as if I had no sense of humor explaining that it would be funny if he ran in there with his boxer shorts.  My response came rather quickly: GET YOUR FREAKING PANTS BACK ON!  Then we opened the door, yelled loudly and ran.  The boys were happy, I was no longer the party-pooper, and now we could all just go to bed.  

JULY 30
Today was the day to pack up and head off.  We managed to get everything back into the vans rather well.  But I will admit that when we held onto these vans for back-to-back mission trips on two weeks where it was pretty hot, and saving the last week to be with Junior Highers, the vans we quite a mess to behold.  We said bye to our group leaders and then left.  Knowing that we had to travel through Chicago, we just had to stop for a few hours.  We parked our vans, walked around for a while, and then ate lunch at Ed Debevic's.  This is one of the most classic 50's diners were the waiters and waitresses are very obnoxious and fun.  The kids loved it.  After a nice, full, and entertaining lunch, we left for home.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
As I look back over the Summer now I do have to say that it was really interesting to go on an international, urban and rural mission trip all in the same Summer.  There were many, many different experiences that come with each type.  I loved it.  I really enjoy doing mission trips.  I love helping teens see that they can make a difference in their world.  I love teaching them how to be the hands and feet of Jesus to those who are hurting and hungry.  I love helping them to get a much bigger picture of life outside of our safe suburban neighborhoods.  But to do 3 trips crammed into one Summer was a lot.  I did not like the fact that if a teen was not signed up for a mission trip then there was very little else going on back here in Loveland.  So I hope to limit myself to 2 trips each Summer.  I want to continue to add variety to the locations and types of trips we do as I believe that this gives us a new perspective and challenge every Summer to help grow our faith.  And I also want to make time throughout the Summer to do fun things back here in Cincinnati just to keep everyone more connected.  Now if you made it this far in this post I will reward you with letting you know what we are doing for next Summer!  I am trying to work it out for the Junior High to go to Cleveland and serve with the Nehemiah Mission from July 8-14.  The Senior High hopefully with be going on a trip to Washington D. C. through the Center of Student Missions on July 22-28.  I hope these dates work well for everyone so that we can get maximum participation.  Both trips will be awesome!  

Blog Post #1: Junior High Mission Trip to Chicago 2011

Sunday, July 24

It was a bit hard to just run home wash my closes and head back up to the church on Sunday morning to get ready to head off for the final trip.  I actually used the Junior High class to help me out with getting the last-minute stuff ready after we had a time of prayer.  I also asked those who were not going on the trip to please keep us all in prayer throughout the week. 

We eventually piled into the vans and headed north this time!  We had a really good start as the Junior Highers seemed to display better bladder control than the Senior Highers.  I was mildly impressed.  I drove one of the 15 passenger vans this time.  I had Max riding shotgun.  Most of those in our van were boys.  Max took it upon himself to give this young bucks an education in country music just about the whole way up.  At one point, he found a polka station!  This was delightful!  The Junior High boys were squirming but they would not dare challenge Max.  They might whine a little but that was all.  Once the desire for perogies, polish sausage and a pint of beer became too unbearable for me, I had Max change it back to his country music.

After navigating through the traffic of Chicago, even on a Sunday afternoon, we made it to the campus of North Park University.  This college is affiliated with the Covenant Church.  Once we parked we met our host leaders for the week, Lauren and Rachel.  They told us that the group will need to be split into two separate groups for the week.  So I had all of the kids link up with one friend in a single file line.  Then I went down the line sending each pair to the left then the next one to the right.  So to be fair I let them have their one friend they really wanted to be with but the reality was that we all knew each other pretty well so they had friends on their team as well as the one they personally picked out. 

We also settled into our room situation.  It actually was a pretty sweet deal as these were apartments that would house 4-5 college students.  So the boys all slept in the living room area or the dining room area while this guy here got himself a room with a bed!  My room was right in the middle of the apartment so I was able to monitor the noise levels if needed but overall I was very happy!

Once we figured that all out we headed out for our first cultural experience eating dinner at a Columbian restaurant!  They would bring out large family style plates of food.  We were hungry enough that we would devour the first plate, and then another plate of something else would come out!  This happened several times until we were all stuffed.

After dinner, we did a driving prayer tour all throughout Chicago.  We spent 2 hours going to many different locations.  At each location we would stop the van, our host would explain many of the social, economic and spiritual issues that this particular area was struggling with and then one of the teens would take the time to pray for that area. It was great at first how our teens all had that blank stare when our host would ask someone to prayer.  They started to learn really quick that they need to get over this fear because we are all going to take turns praying all throughout the week!  On the prayer tour we learned a lot about the economic contrasts between the wealthy and the poor.  We were also pretty surprised to learn how real the issue of racism still is in Chicago.

Unfortunately we were unable to take showers this evening.  Very gross when you consider how much I sweat.  But I also had the extra issue that poison ivy was starting to get out of control on both of my legs.  So I waited until the boys were all asleep and then I snuck in a very hot bath to kill the itching.  There was only one bath in the apartment so the deal was that in the evening we would all go take showers in the locker rooms.  If we used the apartment shower we would have to wait for each person to shower one at a time it would take forever. 

Monday, July 25

We woke up and were ready to head off to our first day of ministry!  Both groups would spend each morning throughout the week going to a local YMCA and serving kids that were there for day care.  Then the afternoons consisted of a variety of ministry sites and opportunities.  My group went to our YMCA location and broke the ice with the kids.  It wasn’t very hard as some of the kids even ran to the teens and hugged them when they entered the room.  We had a good day playing in the gym kicking soccer balls around and playing “Duck, Duck, Goose”.  This particular YMCA was very, very nice.  The program and structure that the kids had throughout the day was really nice.  All the children seemed to enjoy their experience there.  

We left close to noon and ate our lunch out by our van.  This is always the time I take to shot 1,000 questions at our CSM leader.  I am always fascinated by these 20-somethings that give up their whole Summer for a very low-paying but very active and spiritually rewarding experience whether it is CSM or Mountain T.O.P. or serving in Africa.  Rachelle was the leader of this team.  She is from California.  She attended a CSM trip to Los Angeles as a teen.  Now she is serving in Chicago and loves it.  She has one more year of college to go and then the sky seems to be the limit to what she is open to doing.  She has traveled a ridiculous amount around the world going on mission trips and just traveling so we had a lot of questions about those experiences. 

Our afternoon was spent going to 2 different Senior Living Centers to spend time with them and lead bingo games.  We stopped at a CVS and got a bunch of random prizes.  Many of it was toiletries stuff.  I think we tossed in a slinky just for fun.  Little did we know that we were about to enter into the most dangerous and volatile area in all of Chicago.  Our first stop was actually pretty nice.  There were a lot of elderly Asian people who came out and played well.  The only issue was that our teens were not loud enough.  If you have been around me at all, you know I do not struggle in the area of volume.  In fact my very first girl friend in Junior High tried to teach me how to not talk so loud.  She failed.  So I went to the front of the room and used my big, booming voice to holler out the letter and the numbers.  Every once in a while I would yell out something that didn’t make sense like: “OH . . . Henry!” or “Bee – Have!”.  I would get some confused looks and some smiles.  Some caught on, others didn’t.  Many of our teens sat in with the people and played with them.  Of course we would never take a prize and they knew that. 

After a fairly positive experience we headed off to our next Senior Living Center.  What we were unaware of was that we have now just crossed into the territory of Mordor and the eye of Sauron was looking at those prizes we were carrying!  You could almost hear that deep, diabolical voice saying, “I see them!”   We entered into the meeting room and everything seemed to be very similar to that last place we were just at.  I helped to pass out bingo cards and I was also looking for any extra ones so I could also play.  Unfortunately, one of the elderly women picked up on my intentions and started pointing at me while saying, “YOU CAN’T PLAY!”.  She said this over and over again until I realized that she was being quite serious and I better just go sit down and shut up. 

I went to the back of the room and decided to observe things as I checked my emails on my phone.  The first sign that something was not all good here was when I looked up and noticed that one of the women who seemed upset about how the game was going, grabbed a bingo card from someone claiming to win and chucked it at my teens who were running the bingo game up front.  I was fully engaged in watching what was going on now in that my own daughter was one of the ones standing up their trying to lead the game.  The look on her and Morgan’s face was awesome!  Their eyes were about as wide as they could get them as they tried to continue on calling numbers. 

Within minutes, apparently one woman felt that she had won and another who was strategically sitting up front facing the aisle, believed strongly that this woman was a liar.  So as the winning woman was trying to get a prize, the woman who disagreed decided to reach out and grab this woman by the back of her belt.  She pulled with enough force that the woman started to lose her balance and fall backwards.  This was one of those “slow-motion” moments where you can’t believe that you are seeing what you are seeing and your eyes and mouth are about as wide open as they can get.  As she fell backwards, she landed right in the lap of the lady pulling her.  She jumped off her lap, turned around and the foreign languages began to fly as they turned red in the face. I thought for a moment we were going to have a full on fight.  What was I doing? I was staying right where I was at in the back of the room far, far away from this whole thing!  My luck, if I had tried to intervene, would have been not good.  If it was a kid fight, or a teen fight, or even an adult fight that would have been different, but 2 elderly people? No way.  Besides it was way to awesome to watch my daughter react in the middle of it all.  This is a story she will remember forever!

After our exciting times with Bingo madness, we met up with the other team on the beach of Lake Michigan to debrief how the day went.  It was an interesting debrief as our leaders had the teens act out 3 scenes of how their day went.  Of course, my team acted out the whole Bingo death match.  The memorable scene from the other group was that Nile, our straight-faced, monotone-voiced super jock, apparently was reading books to the kids they were with.  His team seemed to really enjoy seeing him do this.

For dinner that night we went to a Thai restaurant.  I ended up sitting next to Rachel Mellett.  If there were ever 2 people who had completely different views on food it would be me and Rachel.  I ate anything and everything brought out to the table and I couldn’t get enough.  Rachel on the other had would look at something on the table and make comments of great dis-like as to what the plate of food reminds her of, its putrid smell, and when she would try just a little bit you would have thought she tasted a cockroach.  I gave her a hard time.    

When we arrived back at our rooms, we were finally allowed to take our first showers.  We all showered in the athletic locker rooms.  This was a nice place to shower as everyone was able to be showered quickly and the facility was very nice.  It was also air-conditioned so you weren’t sweating again once you came out of the shower. 

When we got back from showers we were blessed with the arrival of our other intern Hannah and our Senior Pastor Doug!  Doug’s first initial observation of our sleeping quarters was not positive.  He was a big overwhelmed by the heat and humidity.  He wasn’t sure that he could get any sleep in these conditions.  But whenever any officer has his general come to visit him in battle, it is wise for that officer to make sure the general is well taken care of .  So I got him set up in a bed room that was just for him and we got some windows open and fans going to make it somewhat comfortable. 

Once Doug got settled in, I took the teens to the corner McDonald’s for a snack.  We hung out until about 10:30PM and then headed back for lights out.

Blog Post #2: Senior High Youthworks Chicago Mission Trip - Meg King

Wow, what an incredible trip this was for all of us. The anticipation and excitement of what kind of service we would be providing to those in the south side community of Chicago was prevalent in everyone’s minds, or least I’m sure in mine, on the trip there. Great group of kids in my van. Sleepers on the way there; chatty and singing on the way back!

The trip proved to be an eye-opening experience for me in two ways: 1) Just how awesome it is to be given an opportunity to immerse your mind, heart and soul in doing the Lord’s work and helping others in such a hands-on way, and 2) To fully realize what a spiritual, respectful, intelligent and hard-working group of senior high youth we have at Epiphany. Their work ethic and compassion really shined through– even at moments of exhaustion or boredom. Proud to be their youth leader for the week! I learned as much from our own youth while in Chicago as I did at the different ministry sites.

Once in Chicago, our particular group was assigned to the ministry site that was actually right there onsite at the school we were staying/sleeping at. At first, this seemed like it might not be as “interesting” as those groups that got to go offsite but that thought quickly left our minds as we made our own adventure right there at the Salem Christian School – and once we realized our showers were right down the street!! The majority of our work there was more of the physical labor type – painting (we have quite the painters in our group – Julia and Lauren did a bang-up job on the stairwell of the school!); caulking, plastering/sanding (our interior decorators Kelsey, Marnie, and Lauren will certainly now know how to renovate their own homes one day!); moving heavy boxes of classroom supplies, constructing sturdy wooden tables for the classrooms (Wynn and Phil were such the hard-workers and covered in sweat most of the time!) One of the best parts of the week was the day we visited the Dream House, an organization who focuses on rebuilding and renovating abandoned houses. They had a house they needed help with right down the street from their offices –and this was our job for the day! We spent hours ripping walls down and tearing them apart with axes – you should have seen the look of excitement in Winn’s eyes when he found out we were going to be doing this. I think he ripped down the walls in an entire room or more! We all felt like we got quite a bit done at the house and then spent some time cleaning up and shoveling all the garbage into bags. The kids worked very, very hard this day. LOTS of sweat that day!
Another experience that our group had that definitely opened our eyes to the needs of some of the young ladies in the inner city was the day we went to the Young Mothers organization down the street from the school. We helped them collate and package some of the newsletters they were sending out. We also watched a video about the people that this organization serves: young mothers between the ages of 10-18 that have had children (most of whom are single mothers) and are struggling to make it in this world. Something like 84% of young girls in this part of the city had babies before the age of 18. A startling statistic that made us all realize what a dire need these folks had for an opportunity for an education, to make money and possibly start a career in order to provide for their families and provide a roof over their head. The Young Mothers organization provided just that – a shelter for a limited number of participants in the program, an educational opportunity, and career development training. They have helped many, many young women face this feat and beat it!

And a favorite day for many of us was the day we got to spend time with the children who attended the Salem Christian School. The teachers needed help tending to the children while they had a staff meeting so we played games with them, ate lunch with them, listened to their stories and saw God in the eyes of these children and their innocent and carefree ways. It was obvious that some of these children were so appreciative of all the attention and laughter and fun that they were able to have that day with our teens. A few of them especially fond of a couple of youth! They were sad to see us go, and we were sad to say goodbye as well. They touched our hearts in a special way that day!

The other very unique and special experience for me and my husband Tom was that we were able to go on this trip with two of our daughters –and this was such a special and meaningful thing to do this as a family. I hope the girls will never forget it and how it seemed to touch them so deeply to serve others in need and be in fellowship with each other and with so many other great youth and adults.

The Chicago trip was such a wonderful experience – and couldn’t have been with a better youth group! It’s so special to see that all of our teens are being exposed to this type of experience at a young age. I never had that opportunity as a child/teen. I can’t imagine the impact it will in some way be sure to have on their futures!

Blessings!
Meg King

Blog Post #1: Senior High Youthworks Chicago Mission Trip 2009- Scott

Well it is Tuesday and I am finally getting my thoughts together for my first report. We had a relatively uneventful trip up to Chicago. I ended up in the cargo van so I got the pleasure of listening to the music that I wanted to listen to. We managed to find our location easily. The only pain was once you cross into Illinois there is a toll ever 10 feet. Those of you who travel up here know what I am talking about. Our first night was orientation as we split up into teams and get our assignments. Our teams go like this:

Team 1: Lisa W., Sarah, Zana and Chelsea are with another youth group who are going to a place called Casa Central for the week. They will be ministering to Spanish speaking elderly people.

Team 2: Meg K., Wynn, Phil, Julia, Lauren, Kelsie, A.J., and Marnie. They are with another youth group who are staying at the location we are housed at and helping the main guy who is kind of like the care taker for a large section of this neighborhood. They are doing a bunch of manual labor type jobs.

Team 3: Tom K., Paul, Matt, Hannah, Marisa, Erin and Claire. They are with another youth group helping with a church called Ekklesia. They are assisting Pastor Tomas with a variety of things he has going on in his neighborhood.

Team 4: Scott, Ben, Eric, Lindsay S., Ally, Maddie, Sidney, Ellen, Abby and Kate. We are not with another youth group. We are on our own. We go down to a local Boy’s and Girl’s Club and assist Nick Sanchez with many of the programs that he has running for a bunch of inner-city kids.

I will have specific teens write a blog post about their teams experiences once we return. So with that in mind I will tell you about the fun stories of our teens that pop up when we are together!

Day 1: This is always an awkward day for everyone. Everyone is checking out their ministry site and sizing up what the week is going to be like. If it involves interaction with people it can be a little bit more awkward depending on what kind of situation you are walking in to. Plus a lot of our guys including me felt so tired the first day. I had no energy. I just tanked.

Our morning started out with breakfast and devotions. Then we all headed out to our ministry sites for the day. We typically finish up whatever we are doing around 3 and go take our showers and the designated public shower facility that we have been assigned to - yes, icky; but at least we feel clean and it is only for a few days.

After dinner we have a special activity, then club time involving everybody together. We usually have time for worship and a lesson from one of the Youthwork leaders. Then after that we meet in our own individual youth groups.

On Monday night we took the Loop train (L-train) into the city and wandered around Millennial Park. We ran into the famous Chicago Bean. It is this giant metallic bean shaped piece of art. You can see your reflection many different crazy ways. We took a bunch of cool team pictures. Then there was a band trying to shoot a music video right there and they asked us to be in it. All the teens gathered around the band and acted like it was a party! It was funny to watch. It will be interesting to see if this becomes the next big hit on MTV. Next thing I know they will be asking to do the next season of The Real World with our youth group because we seemed so cool in the music video.

After that we headed back to our mission site and had club time followed by youth group time. It was a good first night to get into the grove of what we are supposed to be doing.
Also, every day seems to bring us a new story about Wynn. It was announced at dinner time that those who had the letters A-K could get in line first for food. Wynn immediately jumped up all excited and ran to be the first in line. Thinking that he did not understand the instructions or was using some other type of alphabet, I called him out on it. He then explained to me that his first name is actually Albert. So regardless of whether the first half of the alphabet or the last half determined who goes first, Wynn had all his bases covered so that no matter what, he would make it to the front of the line either with Albert or with Wynn. I was very proud of him.

Day 2-5:

As you can tell I did not have the time to blog like I wanted to during this trip. Youthworks keeps a pretty tight schedule throughout the week and it lends to very little down time. But now I am sitting in my room getting ready for the first evening of the Junior High mission trip and I thought that it would be a good idea to reflect on the Senior High trip before I get to far into this trip and they begin to blend into each other.

Every day started out pretty much the same with breakfast, we make our lunches and then we head off to devotions. The morning mealtimes are great. The sack lunches bring back fond memories of elementary school with PB&J’s and Salami sandwiches.

Devotions in the morning were interesting. The teens felt that the themes were kind of repetitive with just a different theme word each day. It took discipline for some of them to have the 20-30 minute quiet time. I know for some of them prayer time turned into snooze time easily with the quietness and white noise.

Once we were done with devotions we headed off to our sites. My team had a fairly easy task this week. We were helping out a Boys and Girls Club with their day time activities. Just about every day involved swimming. I almost felt guilty at first and then some of our teens struggled with the challenge for the week. We discovered throughout the course of the week and through many different conversations that many of the government programs in Illinois were getting cut due to budget cuts. Many of the employees at the B&G Club went from full-time to part-time pay just to keep the programs afloat. So our presence and help were very much needed. It was just hard doing something that felt like we were baby sitting. We were told we really couldn’t speak about our faith so that we would not jeopardize their government funding.

As the days progressed though, we began to get to know some of the kids and really begin to start enjoying playing with them and serving them. At first for me it was hard to see some of the ways in which some of the kids treated each other - a much harsher level of heckling, bullying, and trash-talking than I am used to from our local teens. But as the days progressed, and we began to warm up to some of them, you could see the relationships starting to form between our teens and the neighborhood Chicago kids. Each day we did something different but it seemed that most of it involved swimming. On the first day we went to the local pool. On the second day we went out to the beach. On the third day we went to the theatre and saw Mall Cop and then went to the local pool. Many of us played a very intense game of Sharks and Minnows until our arms were about to fall off. On the fourth and final day we took them to a really nice local pool. At that pool we had a high dive platform where I finally got up the courage to do some flips off of it. A bunch of us did laps with several of the kids and their leaders. I ended up doing about 16 laps until my arms and legs were beginning to burn and I was physically about to die.

During the evenings we would start out with an evening activity usually right after dinner. On the first night we went to Millennial Park. You can read about that adventure above.

On the second night we had some special speakers. The were local people who decided to take action to change their neighborhoods for the better. The transformation of what they were able to accomplish by beginning with small changes that would eventually lead to massive cultural change in their communities was astounding.

On the third night we attended a local church that met at on of the area high school theatre auditoriums. I forget the name of the church but when I heard that the pastor was speaking about the tabernacle on a Wednesday night I had very low expectations. I began to wonder what exactly was going on when the entire auditorium packed out with hundreds of people. The pastor spoke on a small passage out of Chronicles about the basin that is to be in the tabernacle. He had an entire miniature tabernacle built on the stage. The images that the priest had to confront as he progressed towards the presence of God was interesting. He first had to deal with his sin by sacrificing blood on the alter. Then he had to confront his image in the water found in the basin and use the water for cleansing. There were so many amazing applications that he pulled out of that relating it to the death of Christ and the cleansing of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

On the fourth and final night we went to the beach. Lake Michigan was beautiful. Unfortunately it got very cloudy and even a bit chilly at points. As much as I am very fond of the Great Lakes, I just could not go back into the water. Many of the teens who worked hard and sweated great amounts of water actually took the plunge despite the weather.

After the activities we would have rallies with all of the other groups including the rest of our youth group who were at three other sites. We had decent worship time and teaching time. After that we would have our youth group time where we shared what each one of the teams accomplished that day and how they saw God through their efforts. These are always neat times where you can just sense the closeness and camaraderie of the youth group. The other teams shared stories of working hard within the community doing skilled labor, others assisted with the elderly, and others assisted with a local church pastor and his area of mission.

Funny Things:

The boys always insinuated that they were going to “get into trouble”. The joke behind it was that the Parker Brothers game Trouble was right in the middle of the room we were all sleeping in and they quite literally meant it when they said the were getting into trouble. They played it quite a bit and had fun with it.

Wynn and Matt decided to compete in a nacho cheese eating contest. I was excited because their only other competition was a girl from another church. I thought, hands down, Wynn would devour his cheese and shame the rest. Unfortunately when the clock started Wynn took one taste of the cheese and put his bowl down and looked straight ahead for the rest of the time. Everyone was going nuts at him but he would not respond and just stared ahead. Matt seized the moment and went head-to-head with the girl and squeaked out a victory. I was appalled by Wynn’s “tuned-out” demeanor. At the end of the game though he said that after one taste he was reminded just how much he despised melted cheese. I supposed I couldn’t blame him. I just want to see him as the next host of “Man vs. Food” if God grants me one wish involving the life and times of Wynn Rice. Wynn also had some amazingly great quotes throughout the week but let’s just say here that one involved Marisa putting out peanut butter and jelly for any of those who did not like jambalaya and the other involved Phil shaking Wynn awake if he moves around too much. In order to understand the humor behind that, you will need to find someone on the team to explain it. Both quotes were full-on belly rippin’ knee-slappin’ quotes that only Wynn could pull of in his uncanny sense of humor that shows up at unique moments.

As we rapped up the week we took our teens downtown for the day before we returned home on Friday. We had a lot of fun together. We showed up at the Water Tower Mall and went floor-to-floor window shopping mostly. Every store that had some kind of body spray, perfume or cologne Paul, Wynn and Ben seemed to dump half a gallon of it on themselves. They stank BAD after a while. Like “Pepe Le Pew” bad. We then ventured outside and made our way down to Ed Debevic’s. Half of our team ate lunch there and the other half went to Gino’s East. Each group enjoyed their culinary experiences.

Final Thoughts:

I believe that our trip accomplished what I always hope that our mission trips will do: deepen our faith, bring us closer together, learn how to become more like Christ, and just see the world through a different angle that the one we are used to. I am confident that many of our Seniors will do well in taking their faith to college and continuing to grow in their faith. And I believe that our new school year is going to be awesome. We had many students and leaders who were new to mission trips and strangers to youth group. I think this trip helped to connect them a little closer to the group so that they can feel even more apart of the family once we kick things off in the Fall. I really enjoyed getting to know Kate and see how she is coming out of the shadows of her big brother. It was awesome to see Zana finally connect in a deep way with our group. Matt fit right in with the guys as if he has always been one of us. Now he is! I don’t want to accept that Ally, Marisa, Chelsea, Julia, Claire and Trent are going off to college soon. They have been just as much a part of my life and spiritual growth as I hope I have been to them. I will miss not seeing them on a regular basis but thank God for Facebook and a darn good reason for me to go on a college road trip with some dads and act like were in college again!