All right!
Day one of our 'work week.'
Our group of 8 -- Brian Anderson, Lauren Arquette, Drew Degener, Caitlin Marchand, Alex Marchand, Nick Krone, Luke Pohl and me - Nancy-- had a great day of service. We started by heading down Woodward Avenue to the Central Methodist Church. You know this church! It sits in front of Comerica Park and has a beautiful tall spire. I'm sure you've seen it when you've gone to watch the Tigers play. Martin Luther King has preached from this pulpit before. This growing church of 300 members fills just about every nook and cranny of it's 6 story building with programs. The program we were working with was the Noah Project. http://www.noahprojectdetroit.org Specifically we were helping with their bag lunch program. We made sandwiches and packed bags for most of the morning, then served over 232 lunches! It was very rewarding being able to serve these hungry people. After the guests all left we were given a tour of this historic building. Like I mentioned, it houses many programs. We were able to catch an art therapy type program run through a little art studio they have on the 5th floor. We also went up to the rooftop and saw the small garden they tend there and then caught a great view of the Comerica Park playing field. The volunteer that was giving us the tour said a lot of people will gather there tonight to watch the fireworks.
After our work at the bag lunch ministry we headed back to our "home church" Metropolitan Methodist Church and helped out with the summer camp. Some of the boys played basketball with the kids and some of the girls hung out doing drama and dance until it was time for the kids to be picked up. This was the first day of the summer camp. Even though we only spent part of the afternoon here, we enjoyed interacting with and getting to know the campers. We will be working with the camp for the next 3 days and are looking forward to getting to know the campers even better.
The other group -- Mike Graunstadt, Jeff Doering, Debbie Krone, Madelyn Degener, Tim Walsh, Bill Stark, Joshua Doering, Nathan Pohl, Brenna Degener, Summer Benward, Louie Stark and Jessica Krone-- went to work through an organization called Rippling Hope. http://www.ripplinghope.org. They worked VERY HARD outside today. The group was divided into 2 teams, with one group (Tim, Nathan, Bill and Mike) cleaning out gutters at several homes. These gutters were filled with mud and dirt!
The other team (Jeff, Debbie, Madelyn, Summer, Brenna, Joshua, Louie and Jessica) scraped and painted and also worked on homes. Even that team split up between houses. Jeff, Brenna, Madelyn and Summer went to a house and cleaned up the yard, weeded, mulched, created a planting area and planted some lilies. The others, Debbie, Jessica, Josh and Louie scraped and scraped all the trim areas of a house to get ready for painting. It was hard work. Then, together they started painting all that they had scraped. Painting with a little rain made it even more difficult. Everyone kept their serving attitudes though and kept at it. They almost finished at this house and hope to finish up tomorrow morning if the weather holds out. The best part was that they were able to speak with the homeowners of the houses they were working on.
While Detroit is having it's Freedom Celebration fireworks tonight we will not be going. It gets a little (?) crazy downtown and we want to keep everyone safe! Instead, we'll stay here and enjoy worship with the other 130 or so folks missioning with us this week.
I'll post pictures later! We appreciate your prayers and comments!
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