Week One Summary

This week focused on team building and developing a toolbox for the upcoming weeks of interacting cross-culturally. A quick rundown of the week:

Tuesday:

We did team introductions of the 31 students and 4 staff workers. Then we went to spend the evening in one of the worst streest in St. Louis, Etzel. A large group of people from the church, New City Fellowship, lives intentionally in the community. But Jesus is at work redeeming this city and this street. We’re going to live in this community next week with host families who are doing life intentionally in the city. We got to meet a few of them at the cookout.

Wednesday:

We spent the morning with some logistical stuff, but then we got to go out into the Etzel neighborhood to do some service for the neighborhood. We served in the area of an apartment complex where many refugees are placed when they arrive in St. Louis. In this couple of blocks, there is a group of Burundis, Somalis, Iraqis, etc. We cleaned up broken concrete and big rocks from around the playgrounds, cleared the fence from weeds to make the place look more up kept and restore a bit of pride, and planted some tomatoes among a few other activities. I was working clearing weeds and garbage from around the fence. Many people honked and encouraged us as we were working. Wednesday night we went to the Missouri Botanical Gardens for a fun scavenger hunt and a night of jazz at the Whitaker (free) Music Festival.

Thursday:

We had training in cross-cultural interactions, talking about different cultural lenses and our entry-posture in cross-cultural situations. We played a couple of games to demonstrate some of the realities of the world, like a fixed game of Monopoly. Wednesday night we went off to Forrest Lake Park for a free live show of Hamlet on a stage in the park. It was fantastic! We also got to sit down with one other member of our team for an hour or so to talk about our stories and get to know each other on a deeper level, which is just what I had been craving.

Friday:

Friday was our media festival. We watched some full lengths movies as well as some clips to make some of the historic injustices a little more real. We watched a clip of Amistad about the slave trade to see how Africans were captured by rival tribes and traded to the slave traders for guns or other items. It also showed the conditions and some of the things that went on during the trip over. Gerry asked us at the end, “What did you just see?” One of my teammates said, “Human beings being treated as less than animals.” Then we watched Eyes on the Prize, the condensed version. It is originally a documentary on 14 VHS following the Civil Rights movement in the 50s and 60s. This was the story condensed into 2 hours. They had tons of original footage from that time, as well as interviews with many of the lesser known heroes. Our team played a game of mushball (softball with a 6 inch diameter ball) in the afternoon to get at least a little sun and activity in for the day, as well as build community trust as everyone of all skill levels (including me) joined in the game. We watched Selma, Lord, Selma before dinner, the story of a little girl getting involved in the Civil Rights movement in Selma, and then ???? after dinner about an African-American preacher who tried to get his church to stand up to injustices that they saw or experienced instead of just taking it. He was the forerunner to Martin Luther King, Jr., in Montgomery, Alabama. MJK took over his pastorship after he left that church in Montgomery.

Saturday:

We went off to spend a few hours in silence with God processing the week in the morning. We went back to that Etzel neighborhood to a flower garden that one of the elderly ladies has in the empty lot across the street from her house. We also spent about an hour going deeper with a small group of people from our team with our backgrounds – ethnic, family, church, etc. We then went out and about in the city a little more. We went shopping for hospitality gifts for our host families this week at a shop called The Plowshare which imports local artistry from around the world and sells it here to support those local crafts and trades that would otherwise potentially die out. Then we went to the farmer’s market in St. Louis. We got there at the end of the day so we were really able to barter. We also took a lot of the food that the vendors were throwing away at the end of the day. Through bartering and dumpster diving, we took home hundreds of pounds of fruits and vegetables for about $35 dollars. Some of it was bad the morning, but we’ve been eating some of it, and many of the church members took some home after church Sunday morning. We went out for dinner last night before heading to see an original play called Eye On the Sparrow. It was written by a local playwright who is a part of the theatre organization called Gitama, a group wanting to bring groups of people that normally wouldn’t even talk, much less be together, through the arts like music, dance, and drama. This play was AMAZING! It touched everyone in our group I believe. It told the story of a corporate America lawyer who is laid off, and takes the bus home. It tells the story of her transformation, as she begins to live life alongside the people in her neighborhood, mostly people ethnically different from her. She has to take the bus everywhere, so she gets to know the people, and she goes from successfully living the dream to poor, even to the point of having her house foreclosed on. The title comes from one of the last scenes, where she has been offered her job back, but she doesn’t want to take it. She’s realized that these people around her are like sparrows, going around doing their thing, supporting one another, but most people don’t take any notice of them. But now through her trials, she’s become one of the sparrows, part of the community. There was some GREAT music, awesome humor, a lot of optimism still saturated with realism, as well as truth.

Sunday:

We went to church this morning at New City Fellowship, and sang the opening song in at least 6 different languages (English, Yoruba, Chinese, French, another Nigerian language, and other language that I didn’t catch the name of). We were singing about 50% of the time in a language other than English, which is so fun. The pastor today spoke on remembering God’s goodness and faithfulness. That’s one of the hardest things is to not forget everything that God has done and everything He is, so he talked about setting up a reminder or memorial like the Lord commanded Joshua to do in Joshua 4. Then we were supposed to head out to the Etzel neighborhood where we are living this week, and that’s what most people did, but my family cancelled this morning, so Gerry and Sharie were contacting a couple of back-up families, so we’ll probably be moving in with someone tonight. It’s a blessing from God, actually, to be momentarily displaced. That means that this small group of us gets the afternoon off. I got a chance to sit down and finish this, as well as just relax. We’ve had almost no time to do that yet this week. I did some dishes and checked my email. Most people haven’t had a chance to do that, so I’m thankful for this change of plans. I would have been excited to go with a family right away after church, but you roll with the punches and go with the flow. Hooray for God growing my patience, slowly but surely.

Upcoming:

We’ll be living 16 hours a day in the Etzel neighborhood, getting to know the people and the neighborhood from the inside out, better equipping us to serve them over the following 5 weeks, as we teach their children or serve in their clinics or whatever. Gerry challenged us to ask lots of questions, to find people that have lived on the block for 30+ years and ask them how it’s changed. I’m excited and nervous to step out and ask questions, having my perceptions and assumptions challenged and shattered.

Prayer:

It’s going to be another busy week of training and prep during the day, followed by going back to Etzel to interact with the neighbors and play with the kids and serve the families and the neighborhood. Pray for our hearts and attitudes to be like that of Jesus Christ. Pray that we would step out of our comfort zones and enter in a posture of learning and servitude. We get to lead a backyard Bible class Monday through Wednesday nights, so pray for God to show up there, that He would be glorified, and we would see children learning about the God of hope who loves them dearly.

That’s the play-by-play of week one. As you can see, it’s been a crazy busy week. See the blog “Brokenness” for my take-away lessons from the week.