summer in the city

they're here! the students arrived last thursday and we've had orientation week since then and will continue for a few more days. we've done a lot of trainings and traveled all over the city! one day we had a scavenger hunt all across the city, then we spent sometime in ethnic communities (mexican, polish, russian, orthodox jewish, etc.). it was a great learning time for us all! they we went to church at Jesus People USA (http://www.jpusa.org) on sunday where we met some people who live, work, and worship together. about 400 of them live in an old hotel and have several ministries that they all work in. they don't pay bills, but rather all their expenses are from a central "purse" so to speak. it was a really cool picture of the early church in Acts and i have lots of respect for them. after that we had a listening lunch with some homeless people where we found someone on the street and invited them to lunch. our only job was to listen to them. i was with 2 students and we met dan and arnold- dan was suffering from some kind of mental disability (evident of his talk about aliens in boxes in the park) and arnold just didn't really care. neither of them wanted to go to a shelter. they seemed hopeless and i'm not sure how we can give them that hope. i am still burdened by that and praying that God would show me to best serve them.

monday we to UIC to do surveys and share our faith on campus. it was really cool to be back on campus and talking to people- it made me miss Buenos Aires summer project! our students really took the initiative and had some great gospel- centered conversations. yesterday we went to east garfield to visit breakthrough ministries (http://www.breakthrough.org/) and then to lawndale to visit lawndale community church (http://www.lawndalechurch.org/). we read "real hope in chicago" by wayne gordon before we got to project and it's his story of the history of lawndale church. wayne is a white guy who moved into an entirely african american community and has been working there over 30 years. they have an amazing ministry including a health center. they are currently building a 20 million dollar building to house their expanding ministry. it was really cool to see that change is possible and that it's being done well. check out www.ccda.org for more information on how to effectually transform at-risk and under-resourced communities.

today i am at a sleep disorders center trying to determine why i'm so tired all the time. i'm kinda bored, but it's good to have nothing to do. please pray the doctor's have wisdom in my diagnosis and i can get affordable, effective medicine.

john hancock building

me and sandy walking to the L

michelle and other students riding up to the streets

kyle and pau from the john hancock observatory

scavenger hunt- they had to pose like the statues

i photo bombed seth's picture of the bean :)

i'm working on my newsletter, so it should be out soon!