Cinci Day Three

We are officially past the halfway mark, and it's starting to show. The students that were so gung-ho the first day were a little less so yesterday. As Tanda said, "These kids are working so hard. I know my daughter (Lexi) has never worked THIS hard before." But as tired as they are, they continued to work hard with a very positive attitude. That's what we like to see. But this morning I definitely noticed the fatigue setting in on some of their faces. That's to be expected.

There's not a whole lot new to report today. Many of the reports were very similar to the reports from the first day: we pulled weeds, we separated cans of food, we played  with kids, we cut down honeysuckle. Not a whole lot of new information from the work sites. There are new pictures from City Cure - Kristy's site - which is where I ended up yesterday. I got to play basketball with Devon and get shot by Super Soakers by VonVon. It was so rough! :-) There was also a Mike Mike at the site, so Kristy started calling me Fitz Fitz. The girls there are doing such a great job being totally interactive with the kids and focusing on them instead of on themselves. I did get to meet Gordon, the youth pastor from the church that does this program. What a trip! He is this hip, street, late 40's white guy who pours his life into these little kids. He blew in to give a short talk about repentance and then took off to another site. But during his talk, he looked at me and said, "You're God!" It was a little shocking. Basically he 

was asking me to pose as God for an interactive demonstration of repentance. I've never had someone call me god before. It was unnerving.

We broke early from our work sites yesterday because our evening activity actually took place in the afternoon. We went to the Freedom Center, which celebrates the Underground Railroad in America. The layout of the museum wasn't nearly as user-friendly as the Civil Rights Museum in Birmingham, but there was a lot of good information, interesting displays, and informative movies. The two things that stood out to me were:

• A box that a slave enclosed himself in to ship himself to Philadelphia - free territory. The box was only 2'8" x 2'8" x 3'0", and the man was 5'9" and 200 lbs. I thought about how terrible his situation must have been to put himself through that to be free.
  
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• A piece of artwork that showed various aspects of the slave trade. One of the images showed a black baby being sold at auction and being taken away from his mother. Now that I am a dad of small children, that image hit home even more forcefully than it may have otherwise.

After dinner we had some extended free time, so I took our crew to experience Graeter's Ice Cream, my personal favorite. I don't think it disappointed at all. There is definitely much ice cream being consumed on this trip!

We had our normal club experience, which reminds me of a great comment by Rachel. Someone was complaining a little bit about club, that's is not as big and flashy as they may be used to with The Porch. Rachel said, "They put a lot of work into it, so I think we should be grateful." I gave her a high-five and praised her for her attitude in front of several other students. But then after club, we had a powerful church group time. We covered our work days, which got the normal kind of comments, but then when we started talking about the Freedom Center, things changed a bit. The air got a little heavier as we experienced something pretty serious and sobering. Several kids mentioned feeling very sad as a result. There were tears shed by students and SIMYs alike. I then took the opportunity to encourage them to not simply be sad about what they saw but to get angry. I pointed out that a lot of times, we get sad when we see something like that, but in a day or two, we're not sad anymore. But when we get mad, it tends to burn in our belly until we do something about it. I want our students to get mad about issues of injustice and slavery and poverty, so much so that they are determined to make a difference. God is working to make things right in the world, and he wants to use us. So let's let Him. Will we rid the world of slavery or poverty or racism? No. But can we do our part to make a dent. That is what I hope our students will do.

**Apology alert: Before you hear it from your students, I wanted to let you know that I used some strong language during our discussion in church group time. I used two phrases in particular that may offend. One, I told them that I wanted them to get 'pissed off' about the things in the world that aren't right. Two, I quoted the movie Network in saying that I wanted them to have the attitude of saying, "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!" If this offends you - or if it offended your child - I am truly sorry. My goal was not to offend, but to emphasize how bad these situations are and how badly God wants to work through them to make a change. I hope you understand.**

I think that's about all for today. Don't forget to check out the pictures as there are new ones. And I bought a new camera yesterday, so after today the pictures should be much better. I will close with two funny comments:

• Someone used the word 'esophagus.' Alyssa asked if that was a vegetable.
• This morning before devo time, Ellie asked me, "Can you say 'tutti-frutti' when you hiccup?" I told her that I honestly have never tried. She said, "Its really hard." And I truly think she knows from experience.