Having been here before I knew what I was getting into, but I had no idea what God's plan was. The first three weeks were training, so we sat and listened to talks and took notes, got to know the group a little better. There were people from Ann Arbor, Gran Rapids, Lansing, Ohio, Iowa, Minnesota, Pennsylvania,North Carolina, Costa Rica, Philippines, Scotland, and Ireland. All in Detroit. The guys were living in Highland Park, the brothers were willing to give up there house for the Women and go to Highland park, and we, the women, got a beautiful house in a safer neighborhood. What a blessing. The first recreation event we did as a household was going to a park in Ann Arbor.
I love our driver, she didn't complain about this craziness. All I thought was, this is fun! Little did I know that the craziness would only get worse as the summer went on. By the way the game is, fake laughing, laugh with a fake laugh to make everyone else laugh, the person who laughs falsely till the end wins. So we got to the park and walked around. Some girls held on from vines and swung, another one climbed a tree. I had the brilliant idea of all the girls getting up a tree and I would take a picture, I am not very talented at climbing so I thought it a good idea for everyone else to, but someone else offered to take the pic. God worked on my trusting other people. It was a little hard to get up the tree, it was even harder getting down, I had to trust the rest of the girls to catch me, they did, but I'm not planning on climbing trees anytime soon. The pic.
Living in household. I had been an only child for almost 13 years in my life before my brother came, and when he did, he had his own room. What is my point here? well I have never shared a room. I only shared a room last semester, while I served here, but I had never lived with girls, only girls, and 8 of them! What would it be like? Well I found out that the best way to describe it is that girls will be girls. Now that the summer has come to an end I can say that God had a plan in placing us all together, being as different as we were, so that we could grow and learn more about sisterly love. The schedule was be up and ready for the rest of the day by 6:10 am, so get up before then and get ready, then we would eat breakfast all together, not all of the girls where morning people, but we would all be ready. Then we had Morning prayer, which consisted of worshiping and praising the Lord together, Alternating the worship leader, and then a meditation for the day, then we would have 30 min of personal prayer and then 15 to intercede for the day and whatever else was going on. At 8 we would leave for our respective services and we would get back around 5 30pm to make dinner if we were on dinner duty, and then share, and depending on the day we would have BB Q's, prayer meeting,free time, Recreation time. We would close the day doing night prayers all together at 10pm and go to bed. I was blessed at being able to serve leading worship in the mornings, and going grocery shopping for the girls household with Sarah, my roommate, on Mondays. I must say that it was very interesting to see that I'm not the only person who likes to talk, in fact there are other girls that like to talk more than I do, and they have really cool stories. So God worked this summer on my listening skills and showed me that if there is silence it is OK, one has to listen once in a while, if it is not another person, listen to what God is telling you. Getting home was always beautiful, it felt like a family, I was going to rest, to be with my sisters and see how their day had been. I came to the summer with no idea what household would be like, and I left with 8 sisters that will always be there with me because our relationship is based in Christ and His love. Every year there is a soccer tournament with people from different University Christian Outreaches, and Saint Paul's Outreaches, and Detroit Summer Outreach also participates. Unfortunately only the guys play, girls get to cheer. Yay! well I love sports and if I couldn't play, I was going to cheer as no one had before, so some of us girls had a plan. We would make portrait's of all the guy interns and cheer with them and give them their portraits at the end of the game, also, we would waterballoon them afterwards. That Saturday we had a service project in the morning with South West Solutions. Beautification day, planting gardens and cleaning some Gardens in Mexican Town. So we got ready to serve and brought everything to go after to the guys soccer game in Ann Arbor. Gardening is tiring, I learned, and pulling weeds and planting, but the result was beautiful, and a good learning experience. What was God telling me? well, sometimes we are beautiful flowers, but we are not at the correct place, we need to be replanted somewhere else so that we can shine even more. That was part of what God did to us this summer. He took us out of our comfort zone, and planted us in a new place so that we could grow more and get more. It was really cool to see that after helping out. So this pic is of the girls that went to beautification day.
When we got to the soccer game, the boys were loosing and the game was almost over. In total they won 1 out of 3 games, they did very well considering they only trained for 2 weeks while all the other teams had been preparing for at least a month. So we cheered, and then, we got the water balloons and they were taking pictures, so we went to take a picture with them, the pic was taken and we attacked, so much fun!!! We also got wet because the balloons wouldn't pop, so the guys would get them and throw them back.
I got to serve this summer doing all the services there are, normally one is assigned to one team for the whole summer. Vacation Bible School runs only during the first two weeks, while Street Team, Bezalel, and Mercy Team run for six weeks. Some people that are assigned to Bezalel are also assigned to lead Vacation Bible School with one of the two Street Team's. I started for the first three weeks doing Street Team, the one that was doing Vacation Bible School. So for the first two weeks it was working in the morning with kids, afternoons working at Hannah House cleaning and at South West Solutions. Mondays were training days so we would have teachings about the bible, small groups, prayer time, and games with the High School Interns. I got to serve mostly with the planning of the games, team work, and all need to participate. It was good to see some of this kids stepping up to lead the rest and motivate the rest. I gave one talk, shorter than half an hour, for me, something hard to do. It was called, God's law and his love for us. I talked about the commandments, and explained each one, why did God make the commandments? Because He loves us. I also talked about the prodigal son. All went very well. We also had trips, so the first trip we had we did a rope's course, and then we went to a park to play and swim. At Hannah House our work, for the girls, consisted mostly of cleaning inside, windows, walls, railings, the guys moved heavy stuff around. We also cleaned the parking lot and the front of the building, picked trash and swept the sidewalks and pulled weeds. This is a picture of Crew #2 First day of work before leaving to go back to the office.
The next pictures are from doing Vacation Bible School.
The second week we worked with South West Solutions and it was a great opportunity to know more about the teens that were in crew 1. For the second week they had the older teens go and work at Pennsylvania, the rest stayed behind. I stayed behind. This is when we had a retreat, we went to a rope's course and to a park with a lake. Interesting fact about Detroit. Most kids don't know how to swim. Why? there are no pools in Detroit, maybe in hotels, but not somewhere this kids can afford to go. So they don't like the water that much. Well it was a beautiful day and I got in the water, and to my surprise some of the kids wanted to learn how to swim! What a blessing! 2 Timothy 1:7 says "...for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control." So this kids were facing their fear, they were conquering evil in an activity that was recreational, so here are some of the pics from the rope's course and the swim!
The rest of the week we had work days, again in the morning doing vacation bible school and then working with South West Solutions. The mornings would go by quick and then the afternoons, well it depended on the day. The first work day we had to move all the paint from one garage to another, then empty the carpet materials in the garage, which were more than 8000 sq ft of carpet, to another building, carry it to the basement, and organize it. Our Employer thought that it would probably take us all afternoon, but this kids worked hard! I mean Hard! The crew leader stepped up, divided the tasks, and when we were done doing the little things we all went in and made an assembly line. We were done in less than an hour! We were 15 people, not that many, and yet we finished. Then they had to figure out what to make us do for the next 2 hours. We cleaned the parking lots and swept the sidewalk and were done, so they said we could go home early. So we went back to the office, explained the situation to our boss and he told us that even if the kids work hard they need to work well. They get paid by the hour not by the job, it won't help them to think that they just do the job as quick as they can and they they have free time, no, they need to work hard and well. And they did, they worked hard, well, and fast! Our employers would need to think of impossible un-endable jobs for us so that we could work for the time we were supposed to. One of the teens said, "We need to imagine God as our boss, our employer. If we think of work, and everything we do, as doing it for God, we won't be lazy, and we will most certainly give it our best." When this 14 year old said this, it struck me. It is sooooo true. It shouldn't matter what I get done, how fast, what matters is that I give my absolute best and glorify God by my work, for it is for Him that I am working! What an important lesson to learn. So for the rest of the summer whenever the temp got too hot, whenever the job was boring, I would remind myself and the people around me that we are a testimony to the rest of the world, we are Christians, we need to work as such, giving it our best. This next picture is of us enjoying our break, long break, after finishing the job in 1 hour. No one has pictures of the job, because we were all too busy working.
The rest of the week we were divided into groups and had different tasks, mine was organizing a garage. All this in the afternoon, morning we would have VBS. So the pictures that follow are from the different groups did, and also of VBS.
Friday we had off because it was fourth of July weekend. We had it completely free. Most of the interns went home or got together with their families and the rest, well, the guys went to Lansin, and the girls went to Ann Arbor. It was a great time to rest and to restore energy for the rest of the summer.
My appologys for not having the rest posted, I will post it as soon as I can.
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