Sunday: Scott, Laura, Caitlin, Haeley and I went to City Light church in the morning. The sermon was over First and Second Samuel. After church, we came back to the housing site where all of us minus Scott had been given an assignment to do. We were to take the subway into Center City to do an activity called Philly Explore. We were each given a dollar to get lunch for ourselves and hopefully for someone else as well. After some debating, we decided to go to Wawa and see what we could find there. We ended up pooling our money to get 69 cent soft pretzels, one for each of us and one for someone else. Then we went to Logan Square to find someone to give our extra one to since the homeless usually hang out and sleep around there during the day. We find a man named Frankie, a 52 year old man who had had a pretty tough life. He was actually incredibly selfless as he was telling us all about how he had made sure to finish paying off his mom’s house when she lost her job and what not. We listened to him for about an hour since most homeless men don’t get the opportunity to have a lot of social interaction. After that, we got back on the subway to come back to the housing site where we all split up and did our respective things. I finished unpacking, did laundry, showered, cleaned and wrote my blog for last week! That was my day.
Monday: At the housing site, one of the hosts, Fran, gave her testimony to the group. Then we were off to visit ministry sites. Impact Thrift was our first one. We visited their factory/warehouse kind of place where they sort and process everything. We got a nice tour of the site and after that, we came back to the housing site. Lunch was what we did next. I love being here with the girls and making such random lunch spreads because it’s always so fun. Sunday Breakfast Rescue Mission is where we had our next ministry site tour. We drove by the Philadelphia Furniture Bank after our Sunday B tour. It was off to the office shortly after that where we did these assessment type things to figure out what our leadership styles and values are so that we know how we deal with most things and if our styles are more or less likely to clash. Dinner at City View Pizza was next where I had a hamburger and onion rings. Prayer tour practice was our final activity of the day. It was fun, I always enjoy doing the prayer tour. It’s one of my favorite things to do! Faith led our debrief that night which she did very well with! It was a great start to a very busy week.
Tuesday: Haeley started the day with her testimony here at the housing site. Then we went over our orientations that we have to do with our groups as they come and what we have to say to the leaders. We played a type of cultural game after the orientation. It was really neat because we were split into two “societies” and each group had different rules in their “societies”. During the game, we had a few people switch groups so that they would experience what it’s like to be in a different “society”. Lunch came and went. Then it was off to visit more ministry sites. City Team was pretty cool because it was like a mix of a food bank and a clothing bank. Next were some quick drive by’s of sites. We drove by two Salvation Army locations as well as a Chosen 300 location. Of course, we stopped at a Dunkin Donuts. Then we went and hung out in a park for a little bit before we headed off to Dahlak, an Ethiopian resstaurant. It was so different to eat there because you don’t get utensils. You just use this spongy kind of bread to eat the food with and you can share with the others at your table! After dinner, we met up with a woman named Joetta who helped create a program called Hands of Hope. Hands of Hope is where people pack extra lunches and go out and give them to homeless people as well as talk to them since homeless people don’t usually get that kind of socialization. On average, 2,000 people will pass by a homeless person in Philadelphia without acknowledging that they exist so it gets to be really tough on them. After talking with Joetta, we went to do Hands of Hope. Fran, Laura, Faith and I were in a group and we only found one guy to give a lunch to. When we first started talking to him, none of us knew what he was saying because he was mumbling and I didn’t think he was even saying words but after a couple of minutes trying to communicate with him, Fran realized that he was speaking Spanish. Both Fran and Laura are fluent so once they realized that is what he was doing, it went so much better. He realized that they spoke Spanish and you could see his face light right up. That made my heart the happiest because you could tell that he was discouraged because most people don’t understand him nor do they try to understand him. We gave him a lunch and then we left to meet up with the rest of the group. After we were all together, we talked about what we did and then we did debrief and headed back to the housing site to get some sleep.
Wednesday: Laura started our day with her testimony. Then we toured Philabundance food bank that benefits people with diseases like cancer or HIV who have a harder time meeting all of their dietary needs. Then we met up with the leaders of Bible Club and had some snacks while she told us about the program. Next was lunch at the housing site. After lunch, we went to Camden to drive by a coupel sites out there. Next was Customer Service Training so it was basically role play so that we know what to do in certain situations. Then dinner was at a small Jamaican restaurant where Lily and I shared jerk chicken. It was so spicy but so good. We went to the Philadelphia Museum of Art and looked around followed by debrief on the Rocky steps. Then it was back to the housing site to relax and go to sleep.
Thursday: Lily gave her testimony that morning. We visited Helping Hands Rescue Mission and Pastor Matt gave us a quick tour of the place and he also gave us a ton of snacks. After Helping Hands, we had already packed lunches so we had lunch at a park before our next ministry site. We went to MANNA which is a really cool food bank kind of thing that caters specifically to people who have diseases who need specific dietary needs such as people with HIV and with renal failure and what not. Then we did nuts and bolts which was actually just tying up loose ends and we got what we needed for accounting and paying for our stuff. We had dinner at Shake Shack which is like a fancier Steak and Shake. It was a lot of fun. then we did prayer tour practice with the home office ladies. Laura, Faith, Haeley and I were all in one car with Sammi from the home office. We did this because we needed to practice the prayer tour with people who don’t know the route nor know the info we typically share. We did pretty well, we didn’t really get lost or anything so that was awesome! Then we came back to the housing site and Laura led debrief. Then it was sleepy time which was great. Sleep is going to be a rare commodity this summer.
Friday: It was our last day of training so it was very bittersweet. I started the day by giving them my testimony. After that, we visited our last ministry site, Harold O’Davis church where we will be serving with groups at some point. We got a quick tour and then left. We arrived at the office and played hosting Jeopardy to just review all that we had learned in the past couple weeks. It was pretty much all scenario based questions to test our knowledge. It was Fran, Caitlyn, Lily and I against Haeley, Faith, and Laura. My team name was the Swan Squad since my nickname is Swan and the other team was Team Turnt because Faith is always turning up. Swan Squad ended up winning in a tight race. We came back to the housing site after that and had lunch and got our schedules for this week. We are all cohosting so we also found out who we would be with. I am with CAitlin and Lily but our group will be split in two and I will be leading half of them by myself so I am a little nervous about that but I think it’ll be good. Then we had to prepare the housing site which meant that we cleaned, organized and painted. I painted the stairs and by the time I was done, I was covered in paint. Once we were done, we all showered and got ready for dinner. We had dinner at Brittany’s house. We had pizza, breadsticks, salad and ice cream and hung out and had some fun just chillign and talking. Then we made a quick Target run and then we came back to the housing site. We started mapping and what not and just hung around until bed time.
Saturday: Today was our day off so I did not get out of bed until around 1pm. I did some laundry and general tidiness in preparation for our groups coming. We all just lounged around for most of the day and then Scott and all of us hosts minus Lily went to Spruce Street Harbor Park and walked around. We walked through Summerfest and then walked back to the subway to ride back to the housing site. After that, we just hung around and finished up preparing for our groups tomorrow. It was a pretty relaxed day which was awesome.