BSM

day 3 is nearly over.  i’m trying to get this done earlier tonight to try and get into bed a lil earlier.  i’m starting to get tired and i especially struggle in the mornings.  usually i depend on a morning shower to get me goin, but the ymca wants us to shower during their ‘weakest’ hours which is 7-8 at night.  so in the mornings i’m depending on a pot of coffee to get me goin.

this morning was especially hard.  myself, jacob, and hannah, decided to be nice and sacrificial and we woke up early to make eggs, bacon, and pancakes for everyone.  i was really close to deciding that everyone didn’t need that nice of a breakfast, but… i arose, after 2 snooze button hits, but i still got up.  the church smelled amazing.  the aroma of bacon and pancake batter, with slight hint of fresh coffee in the background.  it was nice and everyone enjoyed a breakfast away from the norm of pop tarts and mini donuts.  jacob and i cranked out the eggs and pancakes.  my hannah did the bacon, and hannah t did the pancake batter.  it was delicious and well worth it.

after breakfast, we loaded up and went to a nursing home in bettendorf, on crow creek.  the residents were so excited as soon as we walked in the door.  we took a crew of them outside and we all planted some plants in little pots.  i think they were planting herbs such as parsley and things of that sort.  during that time, jacob busted out his guitar and started strumming.  once the planting was done, we started singing as jacob played and their faces lit up.  it was awesome.  one guy there named Guss was hilarious.  he laughed at everything and had a great personality.  mitch seemed to bond with a lady that he spent most of the time with.  guss’ friend dickey really got into singing with us.  that was a good start to the day.  the residents there just love the company and it was cool to see the joy on their faces as we spent that time with them.

after that we went to The Center on Brady over in Davenport.  The Center is a ministry that was birthed out of St. John’s Methodist Church across the alley from The Center.  it used to be a carpet or furniture store and is now a building that has an inside skate park (this is where Skate Church takes place), a cafe that serves food and coffee drinks, and a education program for teenagers.  they also host a lot of different events put on by the Quad City Prayer Center.  originally while with The Center, we were going to take a grill and some hot dogs to a corner in downtown (supposedly the corner with the most police calls in the last year) and hand out food.  evidently they had some drama last week with the people there and decided to put that on hold for a couple of weeks to let things cool down.  so instead we walked the area and picked up trash and prayed for the community.  one of the things we continue to pray regularly for is the Aug 8th event ‘Rock the River.’

after The Center, our groups disbanded again.  one went to ‘Hand in Hand’, one went to get started on the house we’ll hopefully finish painting tomorrow, and my group went to the Salvation Army shelter to serve meals.  that was awkward at times.  at first, it seemed like we were more of a complication to their process than a help.  we got there to setup and then had 2 hours to blow before serving the meal.  so we went to the outdoor skate park in davenport (i’ll come back to that experience in a sec).  once we returned to the Salvation Army, we did the final prep and set the food out.  we then prayed and then served the food to the families staying there.  it wasn’t quite what we expected.  we served about 15-20 people.  they were nice and polite and somewhat thankful, but it was really hard to have a conversation with them.  they just kept to a distance.  but it was ok.  we then cleaned up, did some dishes, took out the trash, and headed back to the church to eat and finish out the night.

now back to our skate park experience… we went to the skatepark in downtown davenport during some of our free time.  immediately we ran into a couple who does homeless ministry in davenport.  they were there handing out gatorades to the kids there.  they invited us to take some of their gatorades and hand them out with them.  if i knew we were going to have that much time, i would have loaded a cooler with gatorades and waters, but i’ll use that idea next time.  so we just walked around with these gatorades and talked to kids we handed them out to.  at the time there were about 50 or so people at the park.  some were elementary age, junior high, or high school, or older.  but it was really cool to just hang out with them and talk.  these kids were so ready for someone to just hang out with them and ask them questions that showed that someone else cared about them.  it was a cool experience and i’m definitely looking forward to going back with a cooler of drinks and just hanging out with them.  these kids at the skatepark are so open and easy to engage.  what they need is someone to come along side of them, show them they care.  these kids would definitely be open to Jesus… someone’s just got to tell them about him.

talk to you tomorrow.

day two is nearly complete and i will be hitting my mattress head first upon completion of this post.

all three of our groups started out this morning going to the Lydia Home again.  it was the last day to help out there.  while there, we did more yard work for some area families, painted for the Lydia Home, and also did some weeding for them.  we were going to go back to Dorothy’s and put some brick in for her to border her flower bed, but she was unable to find the brick she wanted.  so she pointed us to a house to help by doing some yard work for them.

early afternoon, a group left to go serve lunch at King’s Harvest.  they had some cool experiences.  they enjoyed it more than the Salvation Army experience.  the people that they served at King’s Harvest were homeless and lined up outside where the food was being served, where as the people that were served at Salvation Army actually were staying there.  

after King’s Harvest, that group took some cash and went out and just gave to people.  they went to the Srub n’ Pub on state street and paid for some people’s laundry and helped people take it out to their car.  they went to McDonald’s and just started paying for people’s meals.  when they paid for someone’s meal they would give them a little card with our mission trip phrase “Love God + Others” and on the back of the card would be our  website.  in McDonald’s they ran into some guys who responded to receiving a card by asking “can I have your number with that?”  to which our girls quickly responded “NO.”  but he said he may show up at one of our events.  if anything can get a guy to come to church, it’s a girl!  as they were driving around, they saw a construction crew.  so they went and bought some cold sodas and went back and gave them t the construction workers who were excited for the treat.  overall, I think they handed out about 150 cards with our info on it.  it’s so exciting and inspiring to see our students get so pumped about doing things like this.  this was the highlight for this group so far for the week.

one of the other groups went to check out the house we will be painting in the next couple of days.  there was a guy that showed up to show them how to set up and move the scaffolding.  they then went to LeClaire Park to pray for the aug. 8th ‘Rock the River’ event.  LeClaire Park is the site for the event and we felt it would be awesome to pray for the location at the location now.  they then went to Salvation Army to prep and serve dinner.

the last group, my group, went to ‘Hand in Hand’ today.  a good portion of the kids there have some sort of disability.  some are down-syndrome and some just have really bad temper issues. jacob and i spent the time outside with the preschool kids playing in the sand box.  at first they were pretty shy and resistant to us, but soon warmed up to us and started playing with us.  we buried feet in the sand and built really janky sand castles only to be destroyed by toddlers.  a couple of brothers that were there were awesome.  one loved shovels and he would go around stealing shovels from everyone else and then yell out how many shovels he had.  ”I hav thfree shovels!”  he got pretty excited.  his brother got a real kick out of covering himself in sand.  i also convinced him that there was buried treasure in the sandbox, so he responded by equipping both hands with shovels and commenced digging immediately.  i’m pretty sure he’ll show up tomorrow and continue the excavation project.  the girls went into the baby part of the day care and seemed to have a blast playing with the babies.  i made it in there after all the preschool kids had been picked up and one of the girls saw her dad coming into the building through the window and responded by almost shattering the window out of mere excitement.  her little sister was quite fond of a giraffe toy which she usually had in her mouth at all times.

we then returned for dinner where Hannah’s crew made everyone a delicious meal of spaghetti with meat sauce, salad, and garlic bread w/ cheese.  after dinner we once again made our daily commute to the ymca to cleanse ourselves from the nastiness of the day.

after dinner, we enjoyed some fancy guitar playing and singing.  the hit of the night was Love Story, the one about Romeo and Juliet that streams across radio stations and itunes everywhere.  

we then had a good time exchanging stories and experiences and talking about God moving through the things we are doing.  it’s so awesome to see what’s happening.  what i mean is… when you go off to a mission trip that is normally away from your community, you serve for a short while and while you are there you have somewhat of a short experience there and the responses and the reactions of that service time, drift away after a short while.  sure you may have done something huge for someone’s life at the moment, but once you get back, the impact that it’s had on your life somewhat tends to fade away with the surroundings that were there that are now replaced by routine, comfort, and normality.  here we are, serving in our city, impacting the people that we live in community with.  people who receive cards from us or simply see students working and wearing our tshirts with Bettendorf Student Ministry on the back, can look at that and identify us in the community of this city.  hopefully what we are doing is creating an identity for Jesus in our community that is also reflecting our identity as a local group of students who love Jesus.  what we are doing has potential to leave a lasting impression on people here that will hopefully have more interaction with us simply because we are neighbors and live in the same city.

before going to bed, i must leave you with a final pic of a friend we made.  his life was over before we even met him, but his memory will live in infamy.  here’s to you, Sparky the Squirrel.  good night everyone, talk to ya tomorrow.

today was day 1 of our crew of students serving on a mission trip within our city.  we worked with a couple of different organizations and day 1 was a good start.  for the week we will be operating in 3 groups.  2 groups of 5 people and 1 group of six.

during the week we will be working with Lydia Home.  their ministry is all about providing safe living environments to kids who’s parents are in jail, in a rehab facility, or just unable to provide basic needs for their kids at the time.  the hope is to fill this need to help the parents become stable and secure in a lifestyle where they can then resume a life with their children.

for the Lydia Home, 1 group did some work for a woman down the road named Dorothy.  Dorothy has lived in the Quad Cities for 32 years.  Originally from Alabama, her husband was transferred here to work at the arsenal.  in ‘82, her husband passed away.  she is nearly blind and has a hard time getting around.  she loves having flowers in front of her house, so we helped her by cleaning out her weed & rock polluted flower bed and added some plants for her.  evidently, there’s a snake that makes an appearance every now and then and Dorothy does not like snakes.  one of our students, Katie, doesn’t like worms.  so, Leah, upon finding a worm, threw it in Katie’s face which spurred a shriek from Katie.  Dorothy assumed that we found the snake, so she flipped out too!  i’ve never seen an old blind women move so fast.  once she realized the commotion was aroused because of a worm, she got a good laugh.

the 2 other groups did some work around the property of the Lydia Home by doing some odd end jobs such as yard work and a little bit of painting.  some of the girls also went through allthe board games they had for the kids that attend programs, and check to see if the games had all the necessary pieces to be playable.

during lunch, i had a good conversation with Will who is on staff for the Lydia Home.  he told me how cool it was to have a local group of students from a church to come and do local mission work in their city.  Lydia Home has had part in bringing in groups from across the nation to do mission work here in the Quad Cities.  what bothers me about this is that our churches here in the community should be taking care of our community.  not that the outside help isn’t appreciated, but we need to realize there’s things to be done in our own city.  just like Nehemiah had a heart for his city, Jerusalem, and spent a great portion of his life serving his city, we too must see the needs in our city and work for the best of it.  it’s all about being a city within the city.

1 group left shortly after lunch and went to the Salvation Army shelter in Davenport.  Their they prepped food for the people there and cleaned up after.  normally, the people staying are responsible for prepping and cleaning after and they were excited to not have to bother with it tonight.  a couple of the girls had some gross-out experiences.  evidently the residents clean the dishes after meals, and when getting ready to cook the meal, the girls found some food gunk still clinging to the dishes and cookware that were supposedly “clean”.  the girls also had a fun time hauling garbage bags of waste to the dumpsters.  the thing about these garbage bags was that they leaked some treasured contents onto those who carried them.  so some got a little doused with nasty liquids and who knows what.  and then one of the ladies felt it was necessary to pull a joke on the girls and told them they had to sort through the garbage and separate the glass, plastic, and cardboard.  to which they all enjoyed a good laugh.

the other two groups went to Davenport Central High School.  there we spent about 45 minutes lifting up the school in prayer.  we prayed for the students, the teachers, the faculty.  all that they would know Jesus.  we also prayed for the Aug 8th event, ‘Rock the River’, that will be here in the QC.  it’s going to be a youth rally with the goal of bringing teens to know Jesus.  so we also specifically prayed that teens at Central would be able to go and the now, God would start to work on their hearts and prepare them to be changed when they have that experience on Aug 8th.  during our time praying over the school, we saw a student walk through the area that we were praying in and he was wearing a ‘Rock the River’ tshirt.  that was cool.  and so many people saw us there.  people walking or driving by.  one lady was so distracted by what we were doing, she almost broke into someone else’s car thinking it was her own.  she was trying so hard to figure out what we were doing, that she spent about a minute or so trying to unlock and open a minivan that wasn’t hers, but in fact parked 3 spots away from her vehicle.

after leaving Central, one group went to the ‘Resbit Center’ where they spent some time hanging out with kids with disabilities in an afternoon program.  i’m not sure what all went on, but i saw pictures of little kids beating up the intern, John, with the red plastic whiffle ball bats.

the other group came back and hung out at the church and prepped dinner.

after dinner, we went to the ymca and showered and then came back to the church for some time of worship and teaching.  Jacob led us in a couple of songs and then my friend Derik came over and spoke to our group.  Derik did an awesome job and really challenged our students to be lights that follow Jesus and shine for Jesus with reckless abandonment.  he did an awesome job.  thanks Derik.  after that, we just chilled and hung out for awhile.

right now, all the lights are out, and everyone is getting rested up for tomorrow.  with day 1 checked off, it looks to be a good week.  talk to you tomorrow.

-bryan

also… remember to follow us @ www.twitter.com/bsmstudents.  there we’ll be putting up updates throughout the day and also putting up some pics.