Mission Possible - Wednesday

Becca– On Wednesday morning we began our day with waking up early enough for our first showers of the week. (3 minutes of glory!) Finally feeling clean after our first day of work, we began another day of service. With packed lunches, water bottles and helping hands, (Well, we didn’t pack our helping hands. We already had them and took them with us.) we ran down to the train station only to begin our day with disappointment. (80 three minute showers took longer than we thought.) As we watched the train pulled away from the station we were not in very high spirits. But everyone soon changed ideas with a game of capture the flag and a few doughnuts.

Not long after, we arrived at our first destination, The African-American Museum. We toured the three main exhibits where we learned about African culture. We began with learning about Kimmet, Nubia, and Aksum. These were nations along the Nile river. They were very early civilizations that have impacted our world today with their pyramids, sphinx, and hyrogliphics. Then we learned about ndeble art, created by African women. Lastly, we had an opportunity to design our own art. We used crayons and markers to draw ndeble art (lots of lines and houses) onto African skirts.

After lunch in Franklin Square Park (complete with wiffle ball, soccer, putt-putt, balloon animals, and Harry Potter reading time), we went to Broad Street Ministries. Broad Street Ministries is a church that closed down six years about after losing its congregation. It reopened almost two years about. We were assigned three different jobs to help in preparation of the No Barriers Dinner. We passed our orange cards to strangers along the street inviting business people, college students, homeless people, and other passers-by. We also helped set-up tables, and we helped make pasta salad by cutting vegetables. Our third activity was taking a tour of the building and the surrounding neighborhood. We experienced first-hand the diversity of the neighborhood.

But we were exposed to even more diversity at dinner.

Ridge – On Wednesday night, we had a No Barriers dinner, and that’s when we helped host a dinner for anyone that wants to come. For the dinner, we passed out the cards that Becca talked about, which had the time and place of the dinner. I totally beasted at passing out cards and made 4 personal friends. We had such a great time talking to and meeting the people.

…………………..

We were the hosts for the dinner. This was the first time they served the meal family style. We brought the food to the tables and then sat and talked to the people at our table. After that we had a worship service in Broad Street Ministry’s super cool sanctuary. (It’s old and a little crumbly. Windmills hang from wires along the ceiling. And paper birds with prayers written on them fly between the windmills.)

Just as we thought our feet would fall off, we made it back to the train, back to the church, and back to our sleeping bags.