Last week, I had the privilege to embark on a missions trip with 23 other people. These brave souls gave up their spring break and abandoned their lives for a week to selflessly serve a city that desperately needed love. I would say that we all learned and grew a tremendous amount in such a short timeframe. This is what happened on the trip:
Note: This is a very lengthy narrative detailing the trip. If you're more interested in a shorter summary or don't have time to read the whole thing, scroll through and read the highlights, all of which will be in italics just like this. There will also be a recap at the bottom of the post, so if you just want to know what I took away from the trip then look for that.
Sunday 3/29:
We left for Philly right after the 9:00am service concluded. We were commissioned by the pastor of the church in front of the whole congregation, then went into the parking lot, threw our stuff into the various vans, and left. We arrived at CSM (which stands for Center for Student Missions), and had a brief orientation with the staff there about the building and some rules. It was at this time that we realized that we would be sharing the building with a group of about ~25 middle schoolers from a different church...
We headed off to an authentic Indian buffet for dinner, and the food there was amazing. I enjoyed everything I ate. There was even goat meat there, which I didn't get to try (wasn't aware what it was until we had to go) but it was an interesting experience nonetheless.
We were split into two teams of twelve (we'd be with the same group for the whole week) then closed out the evening by going on a "Prayer Tour" which was essentially a tour of Philly, but much more solemn, as we looked at some of the most broken parts of the city and learned the deeper story behind buildings, monuments, murals, landmarks, and nicknamed areas. Upon hearing the story behind an area, a member of our group was asked to pray over it. The whole tour lasted two hours, so obviously I can't talk about the whole thing, but there was one part that really hit me hard. A street corner on the tour had earned the name "The Million Dollar Corner". This is not because someone had won the lottery there.
The name was given because the number of drugs passed on that corner collectively totalled over a million dollars.
I couldn't help but imagine how many lives were ruined because of addiction. We were told stories of people selling everything they had. In some more disturbing cases, mothers would sell their children to get another fix. I was truly shaken to the core by this, because my mom works in drug rehab, and she will come home telling stories about her patients sometimes. They're always saddening to listen to, so I can't even begin to wrap my head around how many people destroyed their lives because of drugs...
We ended the tour with an interesting visual. We were taken to a park on the top of a hill, and told to get out. When we walked to the edge of the hill, we could see the entire city skyline from there, and it was breathtaking. It made me think about something so beautiful from so far away was really broken up close. Any outsider should know Philly as the city of brotherly love. But dig a little deeper and you find it as the city needing the love that it's so famous for.
Learning about the city in this way hurt. It hurt the same way a physically inflicted wound would hurt. But it made me ready. It made me incredibly ready for the week to come. That we might serve the city and be the very hands and feet of Jesus Christ.
Monday 3/30:
Our days started at 7am or earlier. Back at home, I usually don't wake up until 10-11am, so this was a big adjustment for me. We had breakfast at 7:30, and started our devotionals by 8:00. When all was concluded, our teams left for our day events. Since we had a total of 24 people, we split up into 2 teams of 12 people, and each team went to different places each day. Our team went to a place called MANNA, which is a special food kitchen that makes meals for those with eating disabilities and medical complications. (Diabetes, HIV, special allergies, etc.) We got there around 9ish, and worked 3 hours straight. When we got there they filled us in on what we would be doing then gave us all mandatory kitchen apparel, which were plastic gloves, hair net, and apron. Our job was pretty simple: scoop food into plastic trays, then seal and label them. We created an assembly line, and after a while, really started to get the hang of things. In the time we were there, we made over 700 packaged lunches to be delivered.
We arrived back at the house around 1, and stayed briefly to eat lunch. Around 2, we drove over to Camden, New Jersey, for the first day of a kids' afterschool program for 1-4th grade. We signed some papers, signed up for our groups that we would be working with for the week, and got introduced to the building. As soon as 3 hit, the floodgates holding back the kids were opened, and we were mobbed by little munchkins. We played with them in various ways, but most of the time it was basketball. And these kids were dang good at it, making shots from across the court. And remember: these kids were 4th grade or younger. We played with them until 4, at which point we went to their classrooms to assist with homework. They had warned us ahead of time that a lot of the kids would try to get out of doing it, and that proved to be true on more than one occasion. But they'd eventually do it, and we'd get done helping at 5. We stuck around until all the kids went home (around 5:30) then left.
We met up with the other team at this time, then went to dinner together. This time it was Puerto Rican food. It was decent, but not nearly as good as the Indian food we had the day before. We chilled at the house for the rest of the evening.
Tuesday 3/31
Our team woke up super early (we were out of the house by 8:30 on this particular day if I remember correctly) and we went to a homeless shelter entitled "Sunday Breakfast". We were introduced to the facility and given a task to do. This mainly just involved sorting through donations and clothing. It took us a while, then were introduced to our next job in their kitchen. It was about noon at this time, so we were instructed to serve food to the homeless there. Some people on our team were instructed to serve the food, but others (myself included) brought it out to the people there. We served with a smile and a nod, and walked back for more trays. We got done fairly quick, so we then instructed to talk to the homeless for the remainder of our time there. We paired up into twos and went to various tables to talk. I was with my friend Liam, and we talked briefly to a homeless man named Joe. He caught our interest because of a Bible sitting next to him, so we started conversation by asking if he was a believer. He said that he was, and from there we learned a little about his story. From what I understood, it sounded like he just kept ending up in the wrong place at the wrong time, and eventually lost all his money to the system. This small conversation would be the first of many that we had over the week. And it started to really shape how I viewed homeless.
The revelation that I came to at the end of the day was the not every homeless person chose to be there. Sure, you'll have a few here, but the vast majority just had legitimate, bad luck. And most of the time we're too hasty to judge every disheveled, wandering person we see as one who chose to be there. As I realized later, those on the streets aren't really homeless people. They're people without homes. Still very much human, just without a place to call home. I left Sunday Breakfast with a completely new outlook and perspective.
We drove to the kids program from Sunday Breakfast and hung out there for the same hours as yesterday. Not much else to say about this that I haven't already said. Just an overall fun time with kids.
On the way back to the house, our team got Philly Cheese Steaks, because the other team couldn't meet up with us for dinner due to a project called "Hands of Hope" that they had been assigned to do that night. We would be doing the project later in the week, but in the mean time, we happily ate our food and hung around at the house for the rest of the evening. The other team made it back around 9:30, and we heard a lot about the mission from them. It made me a little nervous/anxious for when we would do it ourselves, because the stories they brought back were pretty extreme. Did that spook me a little? Sure. But did it deter me at all? No. We would just have to wait and see what God had in store for us for that night...
Wednesday 4/1
We participated at the Inglis House for our morning activity. This is a private, wheelchair-bound community, meaning every single one of the residents are in wheelchairs. Most were there because of M.S., but others had head trauma, spinal injuries, or were amputees. Our job was simply to interact with a small group of residents, who came to do a group craft. It simply involved dipping a soda bottle into paint and pressing it onto pre-painted branches to make cherry blossom trees. I did my best to be friendly, but most of the people I interacted with had difficulties with speech, so I couldn't always understand what they wanted. Despite this, the event went pretty smooth, and we had some fun interactions with people.
We had some free time when we got done the Inglis, so we spent some time in Chinatown (mainly to get lunch in a cool location). We chose to go here because it was fairly close to the Ben Franklin Bridge that led into NJ, so it was on the way to the kids program. Enjoyed some dumplings and smoothes, then headed over to meet the kids. Things got a little crazier in the middle of the week, but everything was more or less the same. As a quick side note, this was our second-to-last day at the program, because Friday would be Good Friday, so they end things on Thursday.
We had our night off today. We originally planned Mini-Golf, however the place we picked out closed early, so we couldn't make it over there in time. Instead, we went to Dave and Busters, which was kinda like an adult Chuckie Cheese's. I say adult because there was an age warning at the door that forbid anyone anyone under 21 from being by themselves (because they served alcohol throughout the building). They had a restaurant there as well, so this was our dinner for the evening. We told the servers we had a group of 24 that we needed to be seated, so we went to the the main attraction (the arcade) while we waited. The arcade was enormous, with lots of machines, and an awesome selection of prices. We hung out there until our table was ready, then ate as a big, happy group. Went back to the arcade when we finished with our meals and did our best to spend all of our credits there (they make you buy plastic cards and load them with credits in order to play the machines). At the end of the night, I got a small shot glass (which will probably never see use) as a prize. It was completely glass and looked like one of the few things worth getting with the tickets I had accumulated. My brother, who got a few more tickets than I, got a coffee mug. All around, it was a super fun evening, A very relaxing, much needed night off indeed.
Thursday 4/2
For the first time, we combined groups for the morning activity. We went to a place called Philabundance, which is a food bank that actively tries to combat starvation in Philly by giving away their donations. Their goal is to beet and squash hunger (their pun, not mine). Our job was pretty simple: They had unlabeled canned corn, with the labels separately. We had to glue the labels onto the cans, then put them on a conveyor belt to some people who would box and seal the cans to be shipped and distributed. We're all about breaking records with excellence, so we set a goal of 5,000 labeled and boxed cans in the 3.5 hours we were there. That's 1429 cans an hour, or approximately 24 cans a minute. We had 5 work stations, with 4 people each, so hitting this was not a problem as long as each station pumped out at least one can every 12 seconds. By the time our time we had to call it quits, we discovered that we had not only broken that goal the we set, but also a few Philabundance records.
We labeled 6,630 cans in 3.5 hours.
It was a fantastic feeling to be entirely honest. It was also one of my favorite morning activities, even though the work could be viewed as mundane. So I can't say exactly why I enjoyed gluing labels onto cans. Perhaps the lively atmosphere made everything better. Who knows.
Today was the last day of our kids program. Definitely a bittersweet ending, but it was inevitable that we had to part ways eventually. We just didn't expect it to come so soon. We loved the kids to bits and pieces and wished them the best, which is why were there in the first place. To love. I would say that we successfully did that.
We joined groups and went out to eat at a vietnamese restaurant, which was by far the best meal we had all week. And our CSM leader issued a challenge for us to eat the entire meal using ONLY chopsticks. Which was tricky since there was rice involved, but our entire table was able to complete this task. I also didn't believe certain people when they told me that Sriracha sauce was spicy after I wanted to try it for the first time...
Chilled at the house for the rest of the evening. Hung out. Talked. Had a dance party. You know. The normal stuff you do on missions trips.
Friday 4/3
Friday was our last day in Philly, so we felt obligated to make it count. We combined groups again for the last day and headed off to Kensington, PA. We met a man named Raymond Grant, who turned out to be a small-town hero. He told us that he is on the streets of Kensington every day, doing what he can to return the town to its former glory. Our task was to go around the town and pick up as much trash as we could. We were given tools, gloves, and neon safety vests (the ones that construction workers wear) then sent on our merry way. The amount of trash that we picked up was ridiculous; each team filled at least 6 full-sized brown bags. We found needles, insane amounts of cigarette butts, and even a few bullet casings. This should give you a pretty good idea of the type of people who live there. Which is why it was so impactful to us as a group. We were picking up trash in one of the most violent towns in Philly, which is why I didn't realize the gravity of what we had done until after we left. The people who we normally view as those who *technically* don't deserve their trash to be picked up for them, got their town cleaned up for them. When we were finished cleaning up the streets, the change was incredibly dramatic. You would have never guessed that the town was once strewn with garbage.
Once evening came, we went to dinner as a group for the last time. Thai was the last culture restaurant we planned to go to. I was not a huge fan of this kind of food, but I did my best to eat it. It wasn't the food itself that I had a hard time with, but just the combinations of certain foods really did not seem to go together.
It was a beautiful 60ยบ night for early April, so doing Hands of Hope was a very refreshing way to close out the week, both physically and spiritually. Earlier in the day, we had made bagged lunches for these homeless, and our mission was to hand out as many lunches to as many people as we could find. We split off into groups of 4-5 and walked around Logan Square park to find and pray for these homeless. The first man our group stumbled upon was named William, who had found a hot air vent in the sidewalk. We gave him a lunch, but he didn't really want to talk and said he didn't need prayer, so we we walked away and prayed for him anyways. The next person we met rocked my world, so she gets her own paragraph:
Her name was Diann. She was sitting on the steps of a church with her stuff next to her. As we approached I noticed the overwhelming stench of booze. As she realized that we were going to talk to her, she hid the teeth that had fallen out and rose to her feet in order to be level with us. She welcomed our company and responded well to our questions. We asked her about her life, and what her story was. She told us that she had gotten denied job after job, and eventually couldn't support herself anymore. She asked about us, and why we were here. So we went back and forth with conversation for a while, and it didn't take us long to get on the topic of homeless in the area. And as she began to speak about this, she starting tearing up. "There so many on the streets." She said. "Many don't deserve to be there. I wish they didn't have to be."
This shook me to the core. The homeless cared about the homeless, and yet those with homes don't? I couldn't even begin to wrap my head around this. And in that moment, I realized what compassion was. For the entire week, I believe that I was going into the work each day with a feeling of empathy for those whom i was ministering to, but never compassion. I saw how easy it was to say "I feel sorry for those people" but how many actually looked upon those people and had compassion for them, like Jesus did? How many people have thought to themselves "I wish I could do something for that homeless person" as they walk past a homeless man and a McDonalds? Compassion is not just the feeling to make change, but the action. While Diann didn't necessarily have the power to create action, she showed that she cared, and wanted to do something about it. We can love on people all we want, but if we're missing the compassion then we're missing the point. The unfortunate thing about this lesson is that I had to learn it from a homeless woman. But the great thing about it is that I had to learn it from a homeless woman.
The last person we found was named Wesley, and took the majority of our time. He loved the company, so naturally he talked a lot to keep us engaged with him. Eventually we had to pull away, but I could tell we had left an impact on him. He shook each of our hands as we walked away, so the sincerity he showed was genuine.
We met back at the Logan Square fountain, and when all groups had been assembled, we took a group photo to commemorate our time in Philly, then rolled out. And just like that, our time in Philadelphia and come to a close. We packed up and left the next morning, but we took more than a few lessons and memories with us.
RECAP
Well, our time in Philly came to a close sooner than we had expected. The biggest thing that I took away from the trip was that God really does love us all unconditionally. Some of the poorest people I met on the trip were also some of the most blessed. I believe that it's rather safe to say that the city felt our impact. When we constantly and selflessly serve in some of the less admirable parts of the city, they start to change. If Jesus was walking the earth today, where would he be if he lived in Philly? I think we got a pretty good idea of this message throughout our trip. It struck me more than once that Jesus did not come to heal the righteous such as you and I, but the sick. We saw plenty of sick in Philly. We saw plenty of brokenness. Plenty of hurt. But also plenty of hope. The people in Philly are not completely in the shadows. But there isn't a lot of light either. Yes, you have the food banks and the homeless shelters, but who is meeting the spiritual needs of those in Philly? There are those who need our help. Who is going to get them? As a result of this trip, I can now see everyone as people, and not names or labels. I know what it means to be selfless and to serve without rest for long hours a day. To pour myself out. But most importantly, I knew what it meant to be the hands and feet of Jesus Christ. Because at the end of the day, He is worth it all.
"Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."
Matthew 28:19-20
