Chi-Town Bound

I am sure you are all experiencing some serious feelings of neglect since I haven’t written on my blog in so long. It has been an incredibly busy spring for everyone and me over here at CSM.  I am going to give a very quick update about how things finished off in the Bay Area and update you all on what I am doing now.

        We had a lot of spring groups in the Bay Area, which caused us to also welcome a few new temporary hosts to the Bay Area team. It was great to get to know these new great people as we served alongside one another.

I also got the opportunity to host one incredibly awesome group this spring. After hosting for a full week I have realized just how much I truly love hosting. I had such an amazing week with the middle school students and their leaders. Being able to get to know each individual student on some level, made it that much more enjoyable to host them. I loved getting to joke with them but then also have great discussions that cause them to think about issues in new ways. I could see these middle school students growing tremendously as light bulbs came on. Getting to be a part of witnessing God working in them is so awesome.

Hearing a 6^th grade guy pray for the principal at one of the schools in Oakland on the Oakland prayer tour with such sincerity and care made me want to cry it was so beautiful.  There was also another incredible moment with this group as we were doing a sock and blanket give-a-way in UN Plaza in San Francisco.  After giving away the entire sum of blankets one woman came up asking for one. We apologized to her telling her that we had given away our last blanket but had plenty of socks to offer her. She greatly desired a blanket and proceeded to beg one of the homeless men named Van that we were talking to give her his blanket. He hesitated but eventually after her persistent begging, gave her his blanket. Van didn’t think he would get another blanket but was still selfless enough to give her his. As he gave her his blanket one of the girl’s from my group leaned over as if she had a secret to tell me. “Is there anyway I could go buy him another blanket?” She asked me. I praised her incredibly excited that this middle school girl wanted to spend her own money to go buy a new blanket for this man.  We trekked way down the street to go shopping to find the best possible blanket to give Van. This middle school girl challenged me to think if I would be willing to do the same with my money, not just as a middle schooler but now. Anyone that says middle schoolers aren’t capable of doing great things for the Kingdom is crazy! These were normal middle school students from a wealthy suburb of LA that through Christ were able to serve the city in such a great way. I know that these student’s growth was not due to my great hosting abilities or even due to their youth group, but because God was working in them. I am just so glad to have been able to be a part of what God was doing in and through them.

            Along with hosting we were in the process of a grand move from our old housing site to a new housing site. The church we were renting from sold their building a few months ago so we had to haul everything we owned to a new location closer to Lake Merritt in Oakland. It was quite the trek!

            After we finished the move it was time for me to say my goodbyes to all the amazing people I was so blessed to spend the last year of my life with. It was incredibly difficult to say goodbye to everyone at the after school program and all the other friends I had met. I found these goodbyes to be the hardest I had ever had to go through because I realized I have never left somewhere knowing that I may never be back for a significant amount of time and if I do it will be incredibly different. I still pray for BARM everyday and I ask you all to keep them in your prayers as well. I still miss the Bay Area a lot at times but I know that God has a lot planned for me in this next season of life as well.

            My brother, Jake, flew in to make the long trek back to Michigan with me. We spent many LONG hours traveling through mountains, blizzards, salt flats, and boring countryside, eating a million Hi-Chews and laughing together. We stopped in Moab, Utah to do some hiking and kayaking with our second cousin Brad. It was so much fun enjoying the beautiful scenery and it helped to break up our driving. We also stopped in Denver to visit more family and for Jake to check out the law school of the University of Colorado- Boulder. It was quite the adventurous fun trip and I couldn’t be more thankful for the wonderful brother that I have.

            After making it home I had 2 weeks to spend time with my 4-year-old best friend and nephew, Robert, and the rest of my family. I also spent time with friends and had to unpack and repack. It was so great to be home and see everyone but it was far from the relaxing free two week that I expected.  It did not nearly feel like I had enough time to do everything and see everyone that I wanted to.

            I am now back in Chicago working for CSM in Chicago. After deciding that I wanted to return back in the fall to North Park University, where I was my freshman year for school, I decided to spend the summer in Chicago. I hope to learn more about the issues facing Chicago and hopefully connect with a ministry partner like BARM that I can serve at for the next few years while I am finishing my schooling. If you haven’t been able to tell from all of my posts, the partnership I had with BARM was by far my favorite aspect of my time in the Bay Area. I would love to be able to form a relationship like that with another ministry here in Chicago that would be slightly more permanent.

            I have been here in Chicago for almost 3 weeks now and it has been so great thus far. In Chicago I am not longer an apprentice and are instead what is called a “city host”. As a city host my job entirely is to lead groups through the city and teach them about issues facing Chicago. I will no longer have a ministry partner that I volunteer with outside of CSM such as I did in the Bay Area. Hosting is an incredibly busy 14 hour-long day job with only about 24 hours off each week between groups. I absolutely love hosting even though it is super busy and I can’t wait to get started again on Sunday. CSM Chicago is the largest city operation CSM has and is almost double the size of any of the other cities CSM is located in. As it is the largest city I have 13 other men and women that I will be hosting with to guide the almost 200 group members that will be here on any given week. The other hosts are all such amazing, fun, hilarious, caring people that I am very excited to get to know better throughout the summer. CSM Chicago rents their group housing from North Park, so I am staying right on my school’s campus for the summer. The group stays in the bottom floors of some North Park apartments and us hosts stay on the top floor. We just finished a grueling 2 weeks of intense training where we learned a lot about the city, visited our 50+ ministry partners, and bonded over jamming to horrible top 40s radio in the van. This week there are only 3 groups here so only 3 people are hosting, which has meant the rest of us have had a lot of free time. We have done some CSM work and some volunteering but it has largely been a pretty restful week. Next week however, the madness begins, as we will have a completely full week of groups.

            Please be praying for the students that will be coming to CSM Chicago that their eyes will be opened to what God wants to teach them and that their hearts will be broken for God’s people. I also ask you to be praying for me and the other staff to have energy and to continue to get along, as we become more sleep deprived. I also ask that you be praying for me to not become too accustomed to the issues facing cities. Please pray that these issues will continue to break my heart everyday, as I know they continue to break God’s heart.

            Thank you all for praying for me throughout my time in San Francisco and for continuing to keep me in your prayers while I am in Chicago. I will try my best to continue to write on this blog more consistently then before. Despite the fact that the name of the blog is no longer relevant I won’t change it because that is just way too much work! I hope you all are doing well and are enjoying the beginning of summer!