Taking it to the streets.
I wrote last time in ancitipation of our FLOWING event, which was scheduled for April 5. We were very excited and were bracing ourselves for all the impending logistical issues when 80-90 people show up on one city block on a Saturday morning to pick up trash. When April 4 came along, however, it had been raining for a few days and we were forced to postpone our trash pick-up. A few folks still headed downtown to help serve breakfast at the mission as scheduled, but the rest of us had to wait a week.
The down side is that only about half of those who had originally signed up were able to make it on the rain date, but those who came had a blast (as you can see in our new Flickr album).
We started in front of the mission at 9am as Stan the Man, on staff at WSRM, gave us the run-down. We then spread out around the mission grounds, to the park out back, and into the surrounding neighborhood. Judging by the smiles on faces you’d have thought everyone was happy to be there, millions of cigarette butts aside (seriously, who knew so many people smoked?!).
Also, money for the t-shirts keeps coming in and we hope to cut a check to the Blood:Water Mission within a week or so. At this point, it looks like we’re at $700 or so, with each dollar literally representing one person in Africa who will now have access to clean water for one whole year. We hope to push that number closer to 1000 before it’s all said and done.
What we’re banking on here is that as a result of FLOWING some, four or five maybe, have caught a fresh glimpse of Jesus and what he’s up to in this world. Maybe they caught it in the smile of a toothless mission resident who helped us sweep up trash and was really excited to get a FLOWING shirt of his own. Maybe it hit them when they realized that all it took was a couple of hours and ten bucks to make this happen, and they began to consider what else could be possible. I heard someone say she had a great time, and now plans on volunteering at the mission, though she never has before.
Please join us in praying that with our lives, together we would say AMEN to everything God wants to do in our world and in our city.
Check out the Flickr album here.