February 6, 2009

It's Friday night and I'm home warming up after being out on the streets in the cold. I'm so thankful that it was warmer today than last night! And it's supposed to be up in the 40s tomorrow!! woohoo!

Today I was blessed to get to work at both Clinton Sr Center and Grand Central Neighborhood. I met more volunteers today, as well as seeing some familiar clients. Here's a few thoughts...
One of the volunteers I met today has an interesting story. She lost a good job because of cutbacks. To get assistance to help through the time till she can get another job, she was put into a program which requires a certain amount of time working in the center. She's a neat lady who is hoping to be a Foster mother in the future. I'll get to work with her once a week. I also met 4 volunteers who are students at NYU. It's always interesting to me to hear about what people are studying. One of the clients at GCN was very distraught a few weeks ago when I asked how he was. Last week he had his Bible with him at dinner and said his answers were in that book. This week he was praising God for helping him get a job. Awesome... After helping in the kitchen at GCN tonight, I got to help set up and decorate for a fundraiser. The goodies were donated from some very nice bakeries. They looked delicious. But I only looked...

On the way home tonight, I stopped at Wendy's and used the last of the balance on my gift card. I get the grilled chicken go wrap and baked potato off of the 'value menu'. (I squeezed 3 meals off of this one gift card from last summer!) My bus home stops right in front. Very handy. It was a nice treat.

I got to meet with the pastor from the church upstairs from the space yesterday. We had given them some of our personal stuff and things donated by mission teams when we moved out of the space. It was nice to see these items being used at their church and continuing to be used for God's kingdom in NYC. Pastor Ed has been a good encourager to both me and Mike. I appreciate the time he takes for our conversations. I'm passing on to him the information I've put together for NYC missions to help them with organizing volunteer teams coming to support their church.

Last night was a blast working at Coffeehouse. I got to see Alfonso, who usually works on Sundays. I haven't been there on a Sunday for a while, so it was good to see him last night. Augustine, Derek, Travis, AJ and Clarence were all working, too. Some of the clients are getting used to seeing me regularly now and even thank me for coming. I'm looking forward to having some serious and enlightening conversations with them. I enjoy so much getting to volunteer at the three centers each week. I was thinking today about how funny it is that part of my ministry is to wear a hairnet 5 days a week.

I need to spend some serious time on my Bible study this weekend. We're studying Hannah. I love how God speaks through His Word in just the right way at just the right time. There are a few of us who meet on Tuesday evenings for the study. And a few others join the conversations by a FaceBook page created for the study. We had to skip a couple of weeks while a few people were out of town, so it will be good to get back together next week!

I'm also working on putting together info to bring to AR when I go home in March for a missions conference at my home church. The time will be here before I know it. I really want to share the details of this ministry with all the people who make it possible for me to be here - all the prayer partners and financial supporters. I'm working on gathering pictures and other stuff. I need to get busy!!

But for now, I'll turn off the computer and get some rest.