Birmingham, Day One

Well, today is officially the first day of the Birmingham mission trip. We traveled all day yesterday - and successfully turned a 6 1/2 hour trip into a full 10 hour trip:-) Whoever said it only takes 6 1/2 hours obviously has never done the trip with 29 people.
The trip down was awesome - a little rain early on - but then beautiful the rest of the drive. We stopped for lunch in Memphis and picked up Cody House there - we should have known there would 'timing' issues when we didn't leave Memphis until after 1:30p!
But seriously - we made it to the mission site in plenty of time. We would have been EXTREMELY early if our kiddos would have had bigger bladders.
The church that we were originally supposed to stay in this week had a fire a couple of weeks ago (that's maybe an understatement, it's no longer standing really), so we were blessed to be welcomed into an old school house next door that has taken in the church family as well and is allowing them to meet there while they rebuild.
It's quite warm down in these parts - and without a beach nearby - I think we are all realizing very quickly how spoiled we are!
After dinner, we had meetings to prep us for all that's going to be happening this week and the kids were divided into their work groups that they will stick with for the rest of the week.
Here are a few of the places we'll be working:
BEAT, Church of the Reconciler, Cornerstone School, and The Foundry.

The original plan was that I (Angel) would go from site to site taking pics, making sure everyone had what they needed, blogging for parents, etc. However, once we divided into teams, it was necessary that I lead a team with Tammy to keep two leaders per site. SOOOO, I'll be depending on the info I get from the other leaders and the pictures they take to keep you completely up to date on things.
My group (Sarah S, Rachael D, Alex E, Kelsi M, Meredith C) is at The Foundry for the next two days and we are totally pumped.
There's a group called Soles4Souls that donated 10,000 pairs of brand new shoes to The Foundry's thrift store. Today we are organizing boxes upon boxes of shoes by size and style and tomorrow we actually get to help distribute the shoes! What a REAL impact they are making on showing God's love to the people of Birmingham - and the fact that we get to participate in His big plan is amazing.

Last night we had an evening devotional to discuss our hopes and fears for the week. We had lots of sharing which was great...here a few of the hopes some of our students shared with us that they have for this week (my :shorthand" method of taking notes isn't great, so I'm sure I'll be paraphrasing a few of these):
Holly - that she experiences a real connection with God
Kelsi - that we will draw closer to others on this trip
Ashley - that she will know what it feels like to serve God outside of her comfort zone
Rachael - that we will learn to serve with a true servant's heart; serving when no one is looking
Larissa - that we influence the people we come in contact with and actually make a difference.
Ryan - that he will reconnect with God
Austin - that he will remember the week and actually put it into context in his life back home - he doesn't want to forget everything he learns this week
Meredith - that we would not judge people - that we would realize that they all come from different backgrounds and that they are deeper than what we see on the outside
Sarah - that she would do everything this week with a joyful heart and be as selfless as possible while always maintaining a positive attitude.

As you can see - our students have alot of hopes for the week! They don't just come up with this stuff on their own - you all (parents) have a lot to do with shaping their minds and environment - and you are apparently doing a great job:-)

At the end of the night, we had a little time with just our group (La Croix). JT reminded all of us that we aren't doing this to get attention, but to bring glory to God. We were encouraged to make friends with the other church we are serving alongside and to make it a point to interact with the people we come in contact with.

JT also encouraged the students to journal this week..."just like when you are a kid and your parents put you up against the wall every six months and marked your growth on the wall - journaling is a great way for us to measure our spiritual growth."

Well - as you might have guessed the Foundry does not have wi-fi, which means I am currently a block up the street sitting in a Krystal blogging to you, as my girls are working their tails off with Tammy. Thus, I'd better stop rambling. I am going to upload some pics of the trip down on the Flicker site (no pics from today yet - I'll do those tomorrow...no wi-fi where we are staying).
If you make any comments on the site, I'll relay them back to the group...
Thanks! Until tomorrow...

And...We're Here!

I know what you're thinking. Haven't you been there for a day and a half already? What's the deal? We are concerned parents and SIMYs and want to know what is going on with our kids. Well, a serious flu tends to set one back just a bit, and since I had one yesterday, I will use that as my excuse. So I'm sorry for the delay in updating, but please know that the cause is justified. Let's just say that I didn't leave my bed for the better part of 32 hours. No fun. But today, I am at least mobile enough to find some wifi to give you some updates. They may be sketchy since I haven't had much of an opportunity to interact with the teams, but I'll do what I can.

We made fantastic time getting to Chicago...at least until we hit Chicago traffic, that is. We started off the day leaving Shelly behind with the cargo van to bring Morgan late. Apparently there was a breakdown in communication and she didn't know what time we were leaving. She felt really bad about it, but it was no sweat. They caught up to us at lunch time. I do think we set an all-time La Croix record by going at least 3 1/2 hours without a potty break. That certainly was better than last year when we didn't even make it out of Cape without having to stop, or whenever we take a staff trip and can't even make it to St. Louis without stopping. Then when we got to just outside of Chicago, we called the CSM folk and told them that we were going to be there early, not taking the Chicago traffic into consideration. It turned out that we got there just on time. Overall, a really good trip up.

After getting our stuff put away in the appropriate apartments (we are staying in campus housing for North Park University - not the nicest pads in the world, but a lot better than some of the places we have stayed in for mission trips) and getting oriented, we went out to dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant. That is one of the features of CSM - they let you experience the culture by eating some of the cultural foods (one or two groups ate at an Ethiopian restaurant last night). For dinner that first night, we ate huge bowls of soup with either chicken, beef, or tofu, some spices and vegetables, and the biggest ball of noodles I have ever seen (I will try to have pictures uploaded today). It was pretty yummy!

After dinner we went on a prayer tour of the city. This was really good not only in the aspect of being able to pray for various aspects of the city - racism, poverty, homelessness, gentrification - but also in the educational aspect. As we drove through the various neighborhoods in the city, our host would give us pertinent information and history about it, such as the great disparity in income between the African-Americans and the whites, or the difference in graduation rates, or how white flight has affected certain areas. I think it was really good for our students to hear this information before setting out to serve so that they were better oriented with some of the problems and issues. (One side note that came out of that and our debriefing for that night was the unconfortability our students show with praying out loud. That's just a youth pastor concern, I guess.) After that, we debriefed the experience with our hosts and settled down for the night. A good first day.

I went to bed on Sunday night feeling a little queasy in my stomach, and woke up feeling very achy and fevery. What a great way to start out the mission week! So I hung back while the teams left in the morning to serve. It is a great feeling to know that I have such capable people with me that I can be laid up and not have to worry about whose hands our kids are in. We have such great SIMYs with us who love to serve and love your kids. Know that they are well taken care of.

I didn't get much of a report from day one since I was in bed, but everyone I talked with seemed to have a good day. We had one group set up a thrift store for an organization. Chris said that he wished that they had taken a before picture so we could see the difference that we made. I guess that means we did a good job! A couple of our groups played Bingo with some senior citizens at nursing homes. Apparently, some of the women at these homes were pretty cutthroat about their Bingo. Team Sears served at Casa Central and played with kids. Some of these kids were pretty rough; Derek got cussed out a bit. But they still had a good time, and were looking forward to playing with the parachute today that Nate brought. And Team Gino was the first team to experience the Immersion. In this experience, each team member is given $2.00 for dinner, and they have to try to come up with more. The goal is to help them know what it feels like to be an immigrant or runaway teen in the city. So they tried everything: begging, selling hoodies, offering to work at a bagel shop, and offering to sweep hair at a salon. The ones I talked with said that it was a really great experience. One of them said, "Begging is not as easy as it looks." I think it will be something that they will never forget. The other two teams will have their Immersion on Friday night.

There's not a lot else to report today, but hopefully now that I am somewhat mobile (I'm still not going out to a site today - I'm not close to 100% and am using today to recuperate) there will be more to come. Again, I will try to post pictures today or tomorrow morning at our Flickr site. And to close, here are some random things seen and heard:

• On the van ride up, Sydney Ozbun found one of those little individual flossing tools in the van. We were all pretty grossed out, but not nearly as much as when she actually used it to floss when I offered her a nickel. You would think she would have been the one to get sick. I still owe her a nickel...
• Someone in the van said something about a loofah. Meredith said, "Loofah? Isn't that when a Jewish boy becomes a man?" Yes Meredith, and a bar mitzvah is a sponge that you use in the shower...
• I told the people in my van that we would not be having corporate worship every night like we did with YouthWorks. Someone asked, "What will we do?" Morgan said, "We'll have to tolerate each other, that's what we'll do!"
• It looks like Derek and Taylor have some cleaning to do as it appears they emptied the contents of their stuffed animals on Shelby's bed...
• Chris called me this morning to let me know that Drew said, "I could die with a snow cone in my hand and I'd be happy."

Parents, thank you again for allowing us the opportunity to take your child(ren) to this strange world to serve Jesus by serving people. Pray that they can make a difference, and that a difference will be made in them...