Opening my Eyes to Accepting Help

Today one of the girls on mission with us hurt her ankle at work and was taken to the Urgent Care to get it checked out. She returned in the evening with crutches and couldn’t put much weight on her foot. She posted in the GroupMe and asked if anyone wanted to take the bus with her to the Break Room (Thursday meeting). It was so cool how many people showed up to take the bus with her. There was probably 25 people on the bus and most of us had never taken the bus before to the Church; we had always taken the train. It was amazing to see not only how many people wanted to help her but also how much she let people help her. She was offered piggy back rides from several people and accepted many of them. She let me give her a piggyback up and down the steps of the church for the meeting. As the night went on it was just fantastic to see how she never let her ankle slow her down and how she was so accepting of all the help she was offered. One thing I have always struggled with is letting others help me. I never want to be a burden and cause someone else to go out of their way for me…even though I love doing that for others. I am really inspired by how she was so willing to let us all help her in any way we could. I am so impressed with how our community gets along here and how, just by making a need known, so many people offer to help.

Coming Together as an Army

Today is Jay’s birthday so we decided to get our friend Tim to take him out for Night with the Lord while we make a cake for him for when he gets back. There was a terrific thunderstorm during our quiet time and it was so awesome seeing the city lit up by the lightning. When Jay and Tim got home we shared the cake and then got into a really deep discussion about struggles we have had while on mission and how everyone has felt during the past few weeks. It was such a blessing to hear us all comforting each other and how they really cared about me when I was sharing with them. I am so happy that God placed them in my life for the summer and I am so happy none of us walk alone in our battles. We ended the night with a round of Hot Seat where we got to ask each other random questions and build a stronger connection with each other.

Giants Among Us

The past few days have been a struggle for me and I’ve been feeling disconnected from the group a bit. My energy levels are running low and I cannot seem to be active in group settings and hang outs. I really just wish there was something I can do that’s just a one on one conversation where I don’t wear myself out. That’s what I was thinking as the day went on. I skipped going to campus because I didn’t feel like I could talk to anyone and instead stayed home trying to regain some of my energy. To my amazement, God had something planned that would help me get back on my feet that night. After a friendly game of Family Feud, one of the guys on mission asked me to be his Giant for the day. I knew a little bit about what he meant when he asked me to be his Giant but I had no idea what it all entailed. We went up to the graffiti room and grabbed a chair and sat down to talk. We had an amazing conversation just the two of us. He has questions he asks a different person every day to get to know them and then has us design a perfect world in our head where we are a Giant. Not in the sense of being huge, or being a monster, but in the sense that we can help a lot of people and our world view is exactly as we want it. He asked me to describe it to him. He had some follow up questions before giving me a change to draw or write something on the wall. At the end of the night he took a picture of me and my quote and posted it along with a description of my answer to his question: “What does true peace mean to you?” My post can be found on his wall of Giants here (see his other Giants here). It was the best way to end the night. I went to bed feeling loved and ready to take on the rest of the week.

Future Posts Update

Hello everyone! Thank you so much for checking out my blog and staying up to date with me in Chicago. I wanted to give a brief update about my blog moving forward.

Looking back, my blog mostly resembles a journal of my time here in Chicago and it has been really hard for me to make time to write up posts almost daily. Therefore, starting this week I am going to be posting fewer posts on here and will be focusing on highlights of my time and things I have learned or struggled with while on mission. I will continue to post some pictures on here, but to see more visit my Facebook page or my photo album on Facebook.

There are also two new pages on my website that can be found in the menu at the top of the page. The first is a page called Prayer List, where I am keeping a list of all the people I have met in the city of Chicago and held conversations with. Along with a first name I have a small description of what I learned from them or about them. The second page is called More Student Blogs, where I have created a table of all the other blogs students are keeping while here in Chicago. I also have links to their blogs on the page so you can quickly jump over to their site and check out their blogs.

A final small change is that the pages for My Calling and My Goal have now been combined into the My Calling page.

Thank you again for continuing to support and pray for me and everyone on this trip. The past two weeks have been amazing and I cannot wait to see where God takes us next.

Outreach in the City Weekend

Saturday morning Sunrise:
Sunrise Selfie

Friday:
With the pretty free weekend coming up I want to try and start running again. Friday morning I woke up to go running at 9 with my friend John. We ran to the fountain and then along the coast to the aquarium and planetarium. We had some pretty great views on the run and we thought it would be cool sometime to wake up early and run to see the sunrise over the lake. We got back around 11 and I got some lunch before spending some quiet time with the Lord. I looked and saw that the sunrise is at 5:14am tomorrow…dang, I don’t think I’ll be able to wake up that early to see the sunrise. Not long after that I got a message from someone on mission asking people to walk her to the union station tomorrow to catch her bus at 4:45am. Well, I guess I am going to be able to see the sunrise after all! I got to work a little bit on my summer online class before a bunch of us met to go to the beach. We got to the beach around 6ish and went into the lake, played some spike ball, Frisbee, and watched the sunset into the city. From out in the water the sunset looked amazing! Then we all headed back after dark and got some subway. I went to the sky lounge to see what everyone was up to before heading to bed early. Continue reading

Catan and My Second Day on the Job

Selfie and Fountain

Wednesday:
Today I get to go back to campus for disciple time and for sharing. While here I got some pretty nice views of the city and the campus. I got to talk to this one guy named Mahesh. It was a very tough conversation. He enjoyed blurring out all the religions of the world and seeing how they all pointed to being nice to others. He then came to the realization that the only point of living was Karma and that everyone’s life ends at 0 on his Karma scale. It was still great to hear what he thought of and how he looks at life. After lunch I went out with Clay and he walked me through how he likes to use Perspective cards, which was nice to see. This is definitely the tool I have the hardest time using. While we were out we got to see some awesome views from atop a building on campus. We didn’t find anyone to talk to before we had to meet back up so we hung out at the meeting place and just talked about our times at INDYCC. After campus I hung out at home before we had our family dinner. Continue reading

Still need to do chores on summer mission??

Chopped Final Creations:
Chopped Creations

10 second Video of the Judging:
IMG_0361

Today I woke up and realized…I ran out of underwear. I was supposed to go to campus today to share since I am not working, but since I don’t have any clean underwear I have to do laundry. I get out of bed late and then go to start my laundry. I come back up and make some breakfast. Then I go to switch loads and return to my room for quiet time with the Lord. I spent a lot of this quiet time pondering and talking to God instead of reading the Bible today but I felt so much better after just sitting in silence and thinking. After the laundry was done I brought it back into my room and finished up my quiet time. By this time it is like noon so I decide I should take a shower and get ready for the day. Continue reading

First Day on the Job

So today I get to start working at Chick-Fil-A in the kitchen. My shift starts at 9 am and I am there just a little earlier than that so I may put my stuff in the lockers before clocking in for work. Today both Naomi and I were being trained in the back of the kitchen. We learned how to toast the buns and put the pickles on the buns, work the machines that cooked the chicken, make the fries and see how long they should stay out before being thrown away, as well as a trash run. After the training, I did the machines the rest of the day and Naomi did the buns and pickles. The lunch rush came and made the work become more fast paced. It made the time fly by though. First time I looked at the clock it was 12:50 and I am only on until 2 today. At the end of my shift I was making a trash run and this guy walked up to me and asked me if I knew how to get to Macy’s. I told him it was my first day on the job and that I was not from around there so I had no idea. He began to walk away and said “Jesus loves you”, to which I responded “He loves you too which is why I am here”. He stopped and I began to tell him how I was there on mission to spread the Gospel to those in Chicago. He started talking to me about some of the Christian artists he liked and walked with me to the dumpster on the side of the building. His name was George and he pulled out his phone and started playing music from it in hopes I would recognize it. I didn’t know any of his music as he was 75 years old and liked music from his younger ages and I didn’t start listening to Christian music until about 3 years ago. Continue reading

Free Weekend (for the most part)

Friday:
Today is our first free day this trip! This is also the first day of 90+ degrees outside! Many went to the beach to hang out and play but I was so exhausted that I took the day off, from almost everything! And it was glorious. I woke up early but refused to get out of bed until about 11:30ish. My roommates and I hung out around the lofts and played Chinese checkers until James came to visit. Then we talked about potentially watching a movie on the day off. We decided to watch Now You See Me 2 around 5. I really liked the movie, I haven’t seen the first one but it wasn’t hard to pick up the second one at all. Afterwards my roommates and I stopped at Target to pick up some more food so we could all pitch in and make a large meal for the night. We made Pizza, Tortillas, Green Beans and Mac and Cheese. Then we learned of an online version of Mafia called Town of Salem and so we spent the rest of the night playing that game. It was a very relaxed and lazy day but it was so worth it.

Movie Theater area:
Theatre
Continue reading

Wednesday and Thursday: Night with the Lord and Work Orientation

Wednesday:
Today I am going back to campus and will spend half of my time talking to people and half the time with my discipler. We go to campus at 11 and I walk around with Kyle, my discipler for this summer. We spend about an hour talking with two people on campus before going to lunch. First we got to talk to Mustafa, who is a professor at the school. He grew up in Palestine and it was really cool talking to him and learning about his experiences traveling around the world and where he came from spiritually. The second person we talked to was named Mossaid. He was also an international student. We got talking to him and he said he really like living in Chicago but also really likes Columbus. Then I asked him when he has been to Columbus and he said he has been there a couple times and would be going to Columbus this fall for school. I asked him where in Columbus he was going to be studying and he said The Ohio State University! I got really excited and told him that’s where I go to school! We continued talking until he had to go to class but then I got his number and email in hopes that I could meet up with him again this summer and maybe even in the fall at OSU! Continue reading