Day 7 - Friday, June 25, 2010

I believe I mentioned earlier on that our group was split into two teams for the serving assignments.  My team consisted of all individuals and the other team consisted of all married couples.  On this day, I decided to switch teams so that I can experience serving with others from my group.  We had spent months of preparation and team building with the entire group and I had yet to spend any serving time with half the group! So that morning we started at St. Paul's House (yay!)!  Since I had the opportunity to serve there yesterday serving the guests with coffee as they arrived, I decided today that I would help in the kitchen.  So I assisted with preparing breakfast and cleaning up the kitchen.  Once breakfast was served, I went back downstairs to sit in on the worship time and was once again amazed at the talent and knowledge of these young, devoted workers! Truly inspirational!  Afterwards, a few us headed back upstairs and spent some time with the workers just sitting and talking. We got one of them to play their guitar and sing and it was oh so sweet!  In the meantime, a few of my team members were still downstairs spending time talking with a few of the homeless.  You know that saying "give the shirt off your back"....well, my team member Craig did exactly just that!  He gave the shirt off his back to one of the homeless men who needed a clean shirt!  Check out the picture (link provided in the last journal entry)!  Simply wonderful!  Craig really had some special moments this week between that and helping a man earlier in the week with preparing for an interview! We all had special moments that made the trip worthwhile for each and every one of us!

Afterwards, we went to Carter Burden Luncheon Club which is another Meals on Heals type place.  It was nice to spend some time with the married team members and walk the streets of NYC.  We finished the evening with a BBQ in Central Park with some of the members of Communitas and then a trip to the hospital to visit our team member Gerald who had gotten very sick while in NYC.  Gerald ended up having to extend his stay in NY as he was in the hospital for a week recovering.  He was a trooper and eventually made it back to Michigan a few days after the rest of the team.