Detroit Day Two

OK, it's 11:30 when I finally have some free time to write this. We just had lights out. I'm going to make this short today since it's so late.... We had a busy, fun, challenging, god-filled, awesome, amazing Detroit day. I could jus stop there but I'm sure you want some details.

This morning we met at Fort Street Presbyterian Church. We were welcomed by the pastor, Rev. Sharon Mook. She told us a little bit about the history of Fort Street and and the church today and it's missions. We then all left to go to Gratiot Avenue Church> We learned about it's history and we had a little bit of time to clean up debris and trash on the property and start digging for a flower garden before we needed to leave.

From Gratiot Avenue, Our group from Geneva and the youth from the Presbytery of Detroit went to the First Congregational Church where they have an Underground Railroad living museum. At this museum experience we were taken on a journey to freedom from slavery. It was very eye opening to all of us.

We travelled back to ETS (where we started our scavenger hunt yesterday) and ate lunch, then we got a tour of that building. I told the kids from Geneva that we've had at least 3 people I know from our church attend the seminary there, and we have someone (Meg!) starting there in the fall. ETS houses a new church development called Riverside church that has a sandwich ministry. Here's where our challenge came. We were asked to bring sack lunch out in to the streets, introduce ourselves to people and offer them a lunch! Complete strangers! We left in small groups of three or four. It was an amazing experience. Once of our youth commented that it was way out of her comfort zone to go up to strangers like that, but it was extremely rewarding. We also asked people if we could pray for them, and asked if there was anything specific we could pray about. That, too was amazing. Several of the people we met actually asked if they could pray for us! ONce again I was so impressed that our youth walked right up to people, introduced themselves and offered food and prayer. They explained to people that they wanted to share the love of Jesus Christ with them, and they sure did!

We had some time before dinner after we finished passing out all the sandwiches, so I tool our group to Heidelberg Street near Mt. Elliot. That's where there is an outdoor art exhibit by artist Tyree GUyton. It's very difficut to explain what this is.... here's a link, but I also encourage you to ask the youth when you see them what they thought.

Dinner was at Calvary Presbyterian Church which was special to us in two ways: It is the church where Billy's dad attended when he was growing up (It was known as Montieth then) and it is also the church where Beth Delaney did her internship. Beth even came and joined us for dinner!

After dinner worship was led by the group from Indiana. We were asked to lead worship tomorrow night. After our showers, and a stop at Carvel Ice Cream for some extremely yummy treats we came back to church. We had a short devotional and then began preparing for our worship service tomorrow. Whew! We went so late rehearsing they had no free time tonight. I didn't hear too many complaints though.....

Good night all. Keep us in your prayers.