Eyes Opening in DC

We've been here in South East Washington DC for about 5 days now. God has really been opening up our eyes and moving our hearts this past week. I have learned so much about the poverty here in SE DC. On the weeks leading up to our departure from Illinois, I was frightened and nervous. I had so many worries that were making me think twice about coming on this service trip. For example, I was worried about not working for a week. I recently just bought a new car, as most of you already know, and I have gotten financed for flight lessons. Both of which cost me a lot of money every month. Not to mention, my insurance rates have gone up. So needless to say, I have to work as much as I can so I can afford to pay off these things. Along with giving up work for a week, I had to turn back a few soccer games. Which is where I make my most money. So I was worried that by going on this trip, I would hurt myself in the long run and end up in a lot of debt.

We left our home at Community Fellowship Friday morning, 3/11/11. By the time we arrived in SE DC, it was about 11pm and God started working in us pretty much right away. All of us were pretty tired from the trip and wanted to go to bed. But, we had to set up our rooms. They gave us all air mattresses which needed to be pumped up and some of the mattresses had holes in them and leak fast or wouldn't hold any air very well and leak slowly. Which became fairly frustrating for some of us. I was lucky and got one that didn't really leak but somehow, I ended up not sleeping very much at all. The entire night I kept waking up, rolling around, trying to get comfortable. It didn't help that there was a fire department directly across the street from the church we were staying at, which use to be a convent for nuns, that was busy. They were going on calls all night long and they were loud.

The next day, we all got out of bed around 7:30 AM and went to our first destination, which was our SE DC contacts house. We got there about 9ish. I checked the weather when I woke up and it said that it was supposed to be in the 60's so I thought I would wear shorts. When we got there, we had to wait for the other groups to show up. We waited for a while but they all showed up eventually. While they were all showing up, we were all mingleing with each other and starting to build a relationship. After everyone safely arrived, we began our first task. The first thing we had to do was partner up with someone that was not from our own group. I partnered up with Christina. We were given $7 each, a bus pass, and a piece of paper that had a location and a series of questions on it that we were supposed to ask to people in the area. The paper that we got had no directions on it at all. All it said was that Christina and I had to go to Skyland Shopping Center (ask for the Safeway). Kate, our SE DC contact, told us that we had to ask people for directions and that she wasn't going to tell us. By this time it got pretty chillly and cloudy. A little too chilly for shorts. Before we began we went back to the church we were staying at, only a block away, and I changed into some pants. Afterwards, Christina and I headed out to try to find where in the world the Skyland Shopping Center was. The first person we asked had no clue where it was. She just confused us. So we ended up asking this high school kid where it was and he knew exactly and told us that we needed to take the B2 bus and ride it until we see the big sign that said "Skyland Shopping Center."

The bus ride happened to be really short. Only about 2 minutes. The shopping center, which was basically a grocery store, was within walking distance. About 3/4 of a mile. The area was pretty schocking to both Christina and I. The Skyland Shopping Center and Safeway looked brand new. It was all on one side of the street. The whole thing was nice and clean and busy. On the opposite side of the street, it was all run down, dirty. It had buildings that were boarded up and an empty parking lot that only had a few people walking through every now and then. There were a few resturaunts in the area. A Popeys, KFC, McDonalds, and a New York Fried Chicken. There was also a new Chinese resturaunt that went up but we didn't know about it until later. We had to eat at one a resturaunt, but we weren't supposed to eat at a chain resturaunt. However, we ended up eating at KFC because every place we saw was a chain. In total we were on our own for about 3 hours. When we went into the grocery store, let alone outside, I was really uncomfortable. I was the only ginger, or white person, around. Christina is Philipino so she didn't stick out like I did. Everywhere we walked I felt like people were staring at me wondering what the heck was a ginger doing walking around that area. What really surprised me was how nice the people were. Everyone we talked to was very helpful and happy to help us. It surprised me because I thought they weren't going to want to talk to me at all. I was thinking they'd be pretty resentful towards me because of how "poor" the area was. How they might have been victims of a lot of racism.

On Sunday, we had the choice of going to one of two church services. One choice was a catholic mass which was more like a baptist service, and the other choice was a non-evangelical service. I chose to go to the latter. The church I went to was called Peace Fellowship Church. It was a couple of bus rides to get to the church. When we walked in, we were all immediately greeted by a few of the people in the church. They were all very welcoming. The entire congregation reminded me of Community Fellowship. Just reversed. It was mostly African-American. A couple asians and then a few caucasians. The service ran pretty similar to our services. There was worship first, followed by a time of prayer then a message and finally a couple songs to wrap things up. One thing that my eyes opened to was how they prayed. When they pray during their services, they give everyone who wants to speak, a chance to make a prayer request. After everyone who wanted a chance made a request, they pray for everyones request and for more requests that weren't made. I learned, from Peace Fellowship, how a church community should be acting towards the community and new comers. Too often do people ignore visitors to the church. We never go introduce ourselves or even notice them. 

The start of the week was really moving for being two days. So much happened within the 48 hours and it really made me think about home and was the start of some changes in my heart.