Your Calling

My girls: from left to right: Sarah, Nazra, me, Anna

Hello all! This is Sara blogging to you now. I am just going to give you a brief moment of something that stood out to me this week. We do devotionals with Andrew every morning and there are many things he says to make us think, but one in particular got my attention. He was talking about Micah 6:8 (NIV) “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” He told us that our occupation is not our calling, it’s our vocation. “You can lose your job tomorrow, but you cannot lose your calling,” he told us. That struck me. I have been called to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God. When Jesus was on Earth, He spent a good amount of His time with the people that have little. If He found them valuable, then I should too. This is the 7th St. Louis trip for me. I wouldn’t have gone this many years in a row if I did not find value in these people that God has placed on my heart. I look forward to walking humbly with God wherever He takes me and see the same beauty in people that He sees.

flexi-cookies!

How do you handle it when things don’t go as planned? Do you carry a pack of flex-cookies with you and pull one out as things get crazy? It works for us! The super flexi-powers just flow and suddenly you can deal with pretty much anything the situation throws at you.
This flexi-cookies were needed much sooner than we anticipated. We were thinking we’d stock up, pull ‘em out toward the end of week as we got more tired, things got more crazy, and we were trying to process everything here and at home. Little did we know…
On Saturday, both Alyssa and Lori (separately) started feeling nauseous, and Alyssa was up multiple times during the night with stomach yuck. By Sunday night Alyssa was feeling somewhat better, but Lori fought to hang in there and eventually went to bed early. Three more girls (Heather, Tirzah and Rachel) were out for the count by this morning (Monday) – they also had been up through the night making good use of the toilets . By 8:30 AM, Christy and Sara were out as well.
It’s a big deal – for morning tutoring they match each high schooler with one or two students. With that many folks out, they went from man-on-man to zone defense; each tutor helped multiple kids – a pretty big deal given the, um, attention needed by some of the students (flexi-cookie power!).
We then broke into our work project groups for the afternoon and had fun meeting folks, helping with all sorts of projects, and generally doing what we had hoped to do. By 4 or so we were all drifting back to the main building and a fire alarm went off. Everybody (sick people included) evacuated and waited maybe half an hour before the all clear was given and we headed back in. We still don’t know what caused it to go off. (more flexi-cookies!).
Our next adventure was a Kids Club that didn’t happen – it had been storming and rain had been positively pouring down for hours and it was likely to continue through the evening. So – flexi-cookies! – we hung out, watched Night Servants (a movie by our very own Appleton True North group), ate popcorn, and debriefed experiences from the day. Aside from an emergency run to the 24-hour pharmacy for albuterol (have I mentioned it’s a very good thing we have a nurse and a family practice doctor here this week?), things wrapped up fairly calmly.

		monday pics VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

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.

The Third Tuesday of the Month (Sara and Alyssa)

Hello all!
Yesterday was our second full day of tutoring and work. We were grouped together along with Myster, Mike Z., and Josh Chappeau to do yard work such as mowing and weeding. We set off with Josh in his huge, red, A/C-less van in search of our assigned house for the afternoon. Our unexpectedly long quest began when our Google Maps seemed to have failed us as some streets matched up to where we were supposed to be and other streets were no where to be found. We drove around in circles for a long time, asking random people if they knew how to find the street we were looking for (not to mention all the one way streets that were not going in the correct direction for us), but to no avail. After 45 minutes of driving and circling (and bonding), Mike Z. examined the map closer only to discover that we had made a left turn where we should have made a right. Finally, after discovering our mistake, we found the house. We parked and prepared to unload. Then we looked up at a road sign that read "No Parking on the Third Tuesday of the Month." Alyssa laughed and read the sign out loud to us and said "wouldn't it be funny if it was the third Tuesday of the month?" Then as we thought about that it slowly came to our attention that it just might be the third Tuesday of the month. After checking Josh's cell phone calendar, we discovered that that was true in fact. It was indeed the third Tuesday of the month. Just our luck! We found a spot across the street to park and finally continued on with our scheduled work assignment. It was an interesting afternoon to say the least, but we bonded!

Monday morning is upon us (from Sara)

Good morning fellow Wisconsinites!

Monday morning has come which means the beginning of tutoring and work projects, not that we have been slacking off since Friday night. Most of us are still pretty awake so you can tell that work has not yet started to the fullest. It's going to be a long, hard day of work and a bit nerve wracking for those who have not yet experienced the joys of work days. We were paired up with our kids for tutoring yesterday afternoon and we will meet them today! Last night was our first kids' klub and it went quite well. It was really nice to see all the kids again. Lots of hugging and reconnecting. Well, my cereal is getting soggy so I must sign off and eat so I can prepare for the day ahead of me. Keep the prayers coming!
Sara

The journey home... What the trip meant to me (Ryan, Tate and Sara)

As one who is returning from my fourth trip to St Louis, I find it a bit difficult to find some things new. For four years we have returned to the same apartment complex for kid's club, I tutored a child I had years previous, the shirts given at the end of the week were mostly reminiscent of last Year's. However this year I realized after coming so many times I am no longer in the company of kind strangers but friends. There are kids that I remember from my first wild ride to St Louis. Though I said that I felt as if I did things that did not feel "new", I know this really is not true. I help paint a mural and met loads of new people. I am not disappointed with this year, it was just as wild and enjoyable as any of my previous trips. God was at work among us and working through us, that much I am certain of.

Ryan

This week meant a lot to me in terms of relationships, strengthening old relationships and creating new ones. Our youth group has definitely become a family to me and I know I would be lost without them. This is my fifth year on this trip and every year helps me grow in my friendships with these people. Aside from old relationships we form new ones with kids and staff members at New City. Tutoring in the morning connects us with the students and the college City Lights teaching team. Our afternoons are filled with work projects with our group and others. This year I helped paint a mural with others from our group and our project leader Mark Taylor. In the evenings we headed off to kids club to develop more friendships with children. What a joy! All in all, a great trip and I look forward to returning for my sixth year next year! - Sara


This trip meant to me the ending to my senior year. I will most likely stop going on trips for quite some time due to my intense 20 months of college. However this trip was so frustrating at times but I must admit other times it was a blessing. This was my fourth and final year. Too bad I had to be sick for most of it. -Tate