that’s a wrap

Today was a nice wrap-up for the weekend. While we had to get up much earlier than any of us liked in order to clear out our stuff from rooms that would soon be needed for Sunday morning activities, it did mean we were breakfasted and packed well before the start of the main service at the church where we were staying. We had a brief gathering where Dan, the pastor (and Mike’s brother) shared the story of the church and what they’re up to. Then we drove over to The Source to get a nice group shot of everyone on the ramp. Church was encouraging (Dan taught on civility based on a passage from Titus 3 – pretty timely given the crazy political situation), and then we hit the road! Lots of sleeping happening on the way back, but the tiredness is “good tired” – we had a great time, worked hard, laughed and overall just really were glad to be a part of the craziness for another year.

yesterday…

So – normally we try to get out picture updates throughout the day and a summary out at the end of the day for work trips. But yesterday took “work trip” to a whole new level. We got as far as taking pictures – but to actually get them out to Facebook or to the blog was just one step too many.

We had three main projects going on:

Dan Klein & his son Kevin worked on replacing a window with a door (to help The Fallout building meet fire code). They were successful – though there was a touchy moment there when the door might have been hung to swing the wrong way. Crisis averted, all is well, and folks can now easily egress via the back of the building thanks to a ton of hard work from Lori and others to clear out the hallway.

The Source has a new once-foreclosed-upon house that will be joining to their transitional housing network – it’s pink and is decorated with dolphins, flamingoes and cranes, so another group worked at “The Crane House”. Ryan and Sara worked on drywalling inside, while Jeremiah, Christy, Mike, Messiah, Alyssa, Myster, and Nate worked on hauling, making and pouring cement for a sidewalk and digging post holes. They made it! By the end of the day the cement was covered to protect it from the coming frost and the posts were mounted and aligned and ready for the next stage of a storage shed project.

A third large-ish group worked on building a wheelchair ramp into the Art Coop building. That may not sound like a big deal, but the ramp needed to loop through a deep alley so needed a significant support structure in order to be set up correctly. Todd was crew boss for that project with a great deal of help from Tom – and they were joined by Lori, Jake, Ramiro, Antonio, Nick, Ryan, Alyssa, Myster, Messiah and Angela. A bunch of folks circled around and helped with additional projects here and there, pitching in where ever it was needed. Mike’s nephew Walker joined in as well – he’s been on other trips with us so it was neat to see and work with him again. After an 11-ish hour work day, (added to all the setup work from Friday), the ramp was installed! It still needs a railing and finishing, but all things considered it was quite an accomplishment.

The exhausted group packed up the trailer and headed to the Y for showers, followed by supper at Pancho Villa – a restaurant near The Source that has become a favorite. At around 10:30 we headed back to The Fallout where Peter shared a bit about the history of The Source, as well as the story of how they came to acquire the Crane House. Then it was back to the church and it wasn’t long before the building was dark and quiet.

It was a nice day

The day was a nice one. Okay, the early start was probably NO ONE's favorite, but sleep deprivation aside, folks got up without being too snarly, got their lunches made and their breakfastses had, and were on the road without too much trouble. After a stop for contemplation at the Basilica of St Mary, the group landed at the Fallout. They keep having such cool projects for us to do there! This time around the big project is to build a wheel chair ramp. But there are smaller ones too - demolitioning and cleanup and all sorts of stuff. We came back a bit chilled and (some of us) quite dirty, but all that was taken care of by hot pizza, showers at the "Y" and a fun evening outing. Yep, we went to ComedySportz for our evening activity. It really was hilarious - it was fun to see each and every kid getting pulled into the fun and activities of the group on stage. So now we're tucked back in at the church. The plan is to try to get a good night's sleep... we have a ton of work ahead tomorrow!

MPLS.

Well, we made it. Here we are in Minneapolis for our Fall Work Trip. The trip over was fairly uneventful - aside from one van getting nearly blown off the freeway by an oblivious UPS truck driver. It's going to be coooold this weekend so we'll have to keep moving... which kind of works for a work trip I guess! On the trip: Nick M (who we picked up in Eau Claire on our way through), Alyssa, Rachel, Sara, Angela, Lori, Christy, Jeremiah, Tom G, Todd, Mike-the-leader, Antonio, Ramiro, Myster, Nate, Messiah, Ryan, Jake... and someone else but I'm drawing a blank at the moment.

Up for today - breakfast, packing our lunches, a trip to the Basilica, and then WORK! Peter has heaps o' projects for us, including building a huge wheelchair-accessible ramp. Let the fun begin!

Alejandros Essay (typed by Ramiro Rosas)

Mike is very strict about wearing your seatbelt while he is driving. Alejandro would always forget to put his seatbelt on while we started driving. So mike would always read the rules that were written on a sticker about what precautions should be done when driving a 15 passenger van. So Mike made Alejandro write a 200 word essay on the way back to Wisconsin:

Most of the people drive everyday to work, field trips, and more. Seventy-Two percent of the people driving DO NOT KNOW the cautions, and ten percent know the cautions and don’t follow them, and the rest don’ even know what’s going on. Scientist predict in the future all drivers should eat, to keep them stop thinking of food, this will help cause accidents. Sleeping helps to relax, and dream and stop focusing on real life, but sleeping while driving might  be a bad thing. Teachers from ”UW Washington University” were looking and observing most of drivers need more sleep to keep them awake, drivers don’t realize how important it is to sleep, “people who make shortcuts always lose… (Mike C.)” Texting is another thing that is causing accidents, why? ill give an example, as I am driving I get a text message from my friend saying “where are you?” I say “I am home” when I m not even home. 20 mins later my friend is in my house and for not paying attention to his text while I was driving we could chill for awhile. The perfect time to drive is on a sunday afternoon in a sunny day, no traffic and is a day to relax, the conclusion is to drive safe  

now this is a short article on paco’s music rap group, Nameless, created in the trailer park. with a coming up song about saint louis, although the song is unnamed at the moment but will go into work with M. Collison and R. Collison and more members of the rap group. and a remix of a song well known but you will see how well it sounds. Along with that there may be a live performance of it very soon, pressured, we will do our best to give you the best of our skills we have. It will be at the church, but the day I will leave a mystery! ;D here is a short sneak peak to the beginning of the song
“havin breakfeast early in the mornin/ even though some of us are yawnin/ while we’re servin/ up a meal/ a sweet deal/ or a combo/ that takes a dance or a mambo/ through our system/

mike collision (typed by Antonio)

mike here driving through IL dictating to (A Renteria) months ago, I decided that our trip theme would be , (ENLARGE YOUR HEART.) Before we left Gary Campbell designed a heart shaped necklace for the group. At the beginning of the week I challenged everyone to ask god to enlarge their hearts. Here are some of the ways God answered; a small boy named Abdul who got into things, Ann ame, 99 year old women at the retirement home, The families that joined us for kids club, Tough kids at tutoring that softened up at the end of the week, seeing a lot of need in difficult circumstances like mowing a widow’s lawn and meeting a new neighbor, spending time with a joyful group of seniors who call themselves J.O.Y, seeing the joyful faces of kids at kids club breaking piñatas mostly who have never done one, serving along side of a White Mississippi and a Black St.Louis group.
What seems clear to me is that God uses people most to enlarge our hearts. after 6 years I can say this was the smoothest week yet. the credit goes to our team who where amazing. one of the most dreaded jobs of the week is cleaning out the trailer to pack for home. after kids club and construction projects the mess of popcorn, tools, wires, games, wood, saw dust, screws and assorted junk make for a really good challenge. everyone in our group tackled the huge mess in an hour with an unbelievable teamwork.
in the afternoons we built wood shakers with the 5th and 6th graders. these were made out of oak drawer scraps from home. they took 3 days to glue, sand, stain, and fill. the last day we ended with a drum and shaker session outside. it was very satisfying to see 30 colorful would shakers drying in the sun. Of course this would not be a trip without a car repair. the radiator in the green van was leaking a little in the beginning of the trip and started to leak a lot in the end. not wanting to risk a road side repair in Illinois, I bought a radiator. Ryan and I did the repair this morning, it took about 3 hours. we only lost one screw!! A happy report, it was a success. this gave the group a chance to pack up and clean their rooms and say some goodbyes to friends they made along the trip. this year’s tutoring theme, was called “around the world” Gloria, Alejandro and I did a presentation for the new city group on Tuesday, and a presentation on Wednesday in south city. it was informative and entertaining. we put together stereotypical statements about Mexico. for example: everybody in Mexico has a Chihuahua, does everyone like tacos. Gloria and Alejandro shared stories about growing up in Mexico . Alejandro had to face his fear of public speaking. the applause and love of the kids. a funny moment/ I told Alejandro to “kiss the mic’ which means to just put your mic closer to speak. Alejandro thought I  actually meant to kiss the mic and alejandro started kissing the mic. the kids thought it was really funny how he did that and wondered why he did that. even after I explained kissing the mic to everyone that kissing the mic meant bringing it closer to your mouth Alejandro thought it would be funny so he started kissing the mic while I was explaining to the the kids. He is a natural on stage.
Parents, friends, and church family you can be proud of the work everyone did. It was sweet experience for me to enjoy a week of close spiritual community.
A group from St. Louis will be coming up to Wisconsin for labor day weekend for a weekend of service. we will go up to the Menominee residents to cut and split firewood and build wheel chair ramps. we will be looking for host families to house the groups. I look forward to this new serving venture. Grace and Peace Mike C.

What Dashawn and Selah (two folks who goes to church here in St. Louis)

Deshawn

Deshawn: Garrett is funny, and so is Mike Z. And Alejandro is really funny too. You guys are all really mature - not necessarily a good thing. :)

Selah: everyone in your group likes to have fun and get to know each other. You guys do a good job of building relationships and helping people feel welcome in your group.

Selah & Caleb

Thursday was a sweet sweet day

Here's proof!

Kids' Klub Konclusion (by Sara)

Wednesday night was our last kids' klub for the week. A very bittersweet event. Sweet in the sense that during the afternoon after work projects we no longer had to make massive amounts of popcorn or crush ice for snow cones. Bitter because leaving all of those kids and telling them that you will not be returning the next day until next year is very difficult. I bonded most with a few of the little girls (Anna, Greta, Nuru, Sarah, and Nazrah) and it broke my heart when I had to tell them goodbye. Something I always looked forward to each night was pulling up to the apartments and hearing my name being yelled from across the yard and seeing those sweet, silly girls run up to me and throw their arms around me. We spent a lot of time hula hooping, laughing, and playing on the swing set that our  group had built a few years before. Seeing those girls every night really put a smile on my face and brightened any exhausted mood I may have been in. I have known some of these girls for a few years now and leaving them on Wednesday night was truly painful. When I had to tell them that I would not be returning for the rest of the week and only being able to give them a "maybe next year" as I will have graduated college by then and may not be able to go on this trip next year, I was heartbroken. God has truly enlarged my heart for these little girls. I could not hug them enough before we got in our vans and headed out for the last time this week. I will pray for them and their families while I am away from them and hope that I can make it back next year to reconnect with my sweet girls.

Thursday

You may or may not be surprised to hear this, but we’re all pretty stinkin’ tired at this point. We’ll probably work on creating more updates from multiple folks on the drive home tomorrow, but for now I’ll just say that we’re all doing very well, we’ve had an incredible week, and I think we’re all also looking forward to getting home! Tutoring wrapped up well this morning, with many of our kids saying they were sad that we were leaving and some even crying when they hugged us goodbye. Awww! So sweet. We wrapped up work projects this afternoon, and went out for Indian (hooray) for supper. Then it was back to New City where we had conversation about the week and what we had learned and would take away – lots of good stuff. And then everyone “got” to pitch in and help clean out the trailer (it was a complete disaster after a week’s worth of taking games in and out, tools in and out, woodworking projects in and out, popcorn and slushy stuff in and out… you get the idea). Then there was time to hang out with kids from the other groups and relax before heading off to bed. Hopefully we’ll have an early start in the morning – it’s always good to hope, right?!

Pictures to tell Wednesday's story

I'm sure we can get one more on there...

teeter-totter

Bucky as human climbing wall

Simon says!

afternoon's work assignment: moving!

Moments from the last Kids Club - for this year anyway!

slushies all around at Kids Club