Second String of Updates

I'll start off with talking about Sunday. We are helping out at New Hope International Church in downtown Chicago. The children's pastor there has been doing children's church all by himself for a while, so we're helping him out by doing activities, helping with the lessons, puppets, etc. It's a black church, so I'm excited! I love how free they are! There was only one kid there during Sunday school time, so we sat in the adult class, and it was really good! Then after praise and worship, we (the other interns who came and I) took the kids down to kid's church. They have some really cool names in the black community. I learned Jameisha, Daneiva, Ethanya, and Jarmel. There were only about 5 white people (including us), but not in kid's church. In kid's church, we talked about Daniel and the lion's den, and I did a puppet with another intern who did a lion puppet. Then Pastor Ross (the children's pastor) did some Bible drills (these kids are smart! They're working on memorizing all the books of the Bible in order, and they got about 64 of them!), and then let them have a few minutes of free time. Church wasn't over until around 1, which was different. Pastor Tim took the other interns and I to a little corner restaurant to "give us a taste of the real Chicago", as he put it. It was pretty good. We met some interesting people there. One man came in and asked Pastor Tim to buy him something to eat. He was a homeless man, so we took him to a Chinese restaurant and got him some. New Hope usually doesn't have an evening service, but on Sunday night Pastor Tim's son Nathan came and we had a praise and worship night at the church, which was phenomenal. You could really feel God's presence there right from the beginning. After that, they had a potluck type of a thing and we all ate some amazing food and just talked for about an hour. I loved it. They were so free and comfortable and weren't hesitant to let us white people hang out with them. The kids will just come up to me and give me a hug, and play with my hair.
Yesterday was pretty much a "get ready for Tuesday's outreach" day, so we went shopping for prizes, groceries, and anything else we needed. The things that we were asked to talk about were things like "championship", "citizenship", "relationships", and so on. We noticed that they all ended in "ship", so we made a huge ship out of shower curtains to use as the curtains for the puppet stage. It turned out looking really cool! We also did some team building activities in the morning, and that was fun. We did the Gary Smalley personality assessments, and I came out as the Navigator. "I am practical, factual, a perfectionist, detailed, inquisistive, orderly, analytical, and deliberate", among others. When I'm unbalanced, I can be "critical, too pushy, or too focused." I thought it was pretty accurate.
This morning we had our daily devotions with Pastor Travis (pastor at Restoration Church, where we're staying). We read 1 Thessalonians 1, because it was on his heart that that was what he wanted to see in us throughout the summer. Then we finished the touch-ups on our ship made of shower curtains, and made a little sun out of construction paper, got everything in the truck and made sure we had everything we needed. We ate lunch at around 11:30 since we were going to have to leave at 12:15 to start setting up since it was supposed to start at 1, but then Andrea (Pastor Tim's daughter, who is his assisstant) got a text at 11:45 from Nathan saying that he and Pastor were going out to lunch to disscuss funeral plans. So we ended up leaving at 12:55. We got to the site, and it was sprinkling lightly on and off, and then the kids started coming, so we got everything set up and got the outreach going. They came up and gave me hugs. They were so cute! We played the Cheeto game, in which we had people put shower caps on, and then we put shaving cream on the caps and had a contest to see which team could get the most Cheetos on the hat in 30 seconds. Then we sang "Who Is the King (of the Jungle)", "Leaning on the Lord's Side", and "Trading My Sorrows." Then we had a message about championship and why David was called a man after God's own heart, and Samson wasn't. We had just finished the lesson when the rain started pouring. So we packed up and had to go, but not before throwing out candy. So we got back to the church, unpacked the sound system, dried it all off, and put our clothes in the washer and dryer. And now we're just chilling (literally) and hanging out. But we were happy that we at least got to give a message. I think this summer is going to be a good one.