Saturday

Some pictures.

 

Three out of five cars got a bit lost (Evgeni’s car, driven by Paul, kept stalling on the highway and kept losing its power steering), but we all arrived (lunch-less) in time to participate in ICM’s RAVEN program – “Recovering A Vision and Evangelizing Nations.” We moved into our apartment right when we got here – a rather spacious three bedroom apartment on the second floor of the building across the street from ICM’s office. Three bedrooms, a kitchen, a common room, and ONE bathroom for 21 people!

 

After dropping off our bags, we went over to the ICM office – the rest of RAVEN was putting together sandwiches, which went into bags of food which we handed out on the street. We were introduced to each other – RAVEN consists of some pretty cool guys (and women, and girls), some with insanely intense testimonies (one guy was a death row inmate!) – and prayed together. Then we loaded into vans to drive down to one of Philly’s “hot spots”.

 

Philly has five “hot spots” – areas of intense drug dealing and prostitution. We went to the “number one hot spot” – a busy intersection in the heart of Kensington. The strategy: park a van with these bags of food right by the intersection, disperse ourselves around the intersection (on all 4 corners), and engage passersby and those hanging out and invite them to go over to the van to get food. The women manning the van would give them food and then get some of the others to pray for them.

 

In the middle of the afternoon, 10 of us left the hot spot to go to a church (that was in the process of being renovated) to help with some cleaning. The pews in the balcony were disgusting, so we systematically wiped them down with bleach water, while Sindri and Sam went around on a ladder dusting off a ledge at the bottom of the balcony.

 

We regrouped at the ICM office for dinner and a bit of relaxing – baked beans, hot dogs with onions, and Shepherd’s Pie. Pastor Frank’s wife, Carmen, entertained us with her stories and friendly banter with Pastor Frank (ask someone on the team about Pastor Frank’s new shoes). After dinner we hit the streets again with RAVEN, this time going down to Center City to hand out food to homeless people. We stopped first in a park, where a group of homeless guys (and a few women) were hanging out on some benches. They let us pray for all of them (really cool – we made a big circle around them and prayed over them), then we gave them food, clothes, and got to talk to them about Jesus. We then picked up and went to a subway station/mall hybrid, where a bunch of homeless people wandered about (and a bunch of St. Patrick’s Day revelers were waiting for a train.)

 

We got back to the office at around 9:30pm. With the chance to sleep in til 10am, many of us stayed up late to hangout, talk, sing (and play guitar and djembe). We’re beginning to adjust to life here – one bathroom, little hot water, 5 minute showers, etc. But God is good, he’s knitting us together as a team as we work together, pray together, and play together. Sunday is a bit of a day off – church is at 1pm, orientation is after dinner. The evening will be spent prepping for VBS – preparing skits, pre-making certain aspects of crafts, etc.

 

Pray for:

• Team unity
• A worshipful, restful Sunday, preparing us for a week of hard work
• VBS prep tonight

 

-Ben