missing

So, before leaving New York everyone wrote each other letters to read on the plane. It was sad just writing them let alone reading all the encouraging words everyone wrote to me. I found myself teary eyed writing Dayne's letter as I sat in the apartment alone. He had become one of my best friends and I hated thinking about not having him around. That whole week Nichole and I kept getting sad about leaving even knowing we will see each other again....we WILL make it happen. So, in the airport I began reading them....crying and laughing...all the encouraging things people said I was so sad to leave that community that I grew to love. I found myself crying reading every letter...saving a few for the plane rid where I thought I could cry more without being seen. However, on the plane I sat between two men, not next to Sam. I read Nichole's letter...she had become like my sister...and even reading about all our memories made me cry...wiping away the tears I began reading Dayne's and had to stop reading it twice because it made me cry too much. His words were so encouraging in different ways...knowing my heart and my past hurts. I'm so blessed to have all these brothers and sisters in my life. I love them all and I will miss them way too much.
The plane ride sucked being so tired and emotional. Being home makes the past 5 weeks feel like it was just a dream...like none of it ever even happened. I don't want that. I don't want to feel sad or lonely. Everything the staff told us will happen when we get home feels like it already happened in the past 24 hours.
I know I just need to stay in the word and need to keep busy...keep myself surrounded by people...not just sitting on my bed all day.

last two weeks in NYC

I know I didn't write about my last two weeks in New York, so I'm doing it now...sitting on my bed in Louisiana.
Our 3rd ministry site was at Love Gospel Church...they have a soup kitchen so we were able to actually serve the needy. They came in and sat at a table that had flowers in the center. We served them a nice meal...and it made me smile the entire time. That's how things should be...they saw us showing them Christ's love. We were able to see familiar faces through out the week which was really cool. I found it so crazy how ungrateful some people can be...getting mad about what we served them. One young woman even left before getting food saying "I'm bigger than this" that was probably the hardest thing to here. However, on the other end people were extremely thankful...smiling the whole time, saying "God bless you" singing along with the worship music, and one man got up and sang a song for everyone. It was my favorite week of ministry. That friday they weren't open so we had a homeless outreach...it was really weird because we had a hard time finding people to talk to and give food to, while every other day we would see a lot of people on the streets. So, about 20 minutes until we had to get ready for POD we saw a couple guys standing against a fence. Dayne ended up sitting on the ground with a drunk man from Puerto Rico...the man went from laughing to crying to punching Dayne and flexing. Nichole and I ended up talking to his friend Samuel that we would have just passed by. He was dressed in new clean clothes and just got out of jail that morning for fake checks. He didn't want to talk about God, but HE asked if we could pray together and he started! Nichole ended up pretty much sharing the gospel through her prayer which was amazing. He kept saying that he felt so good after we prayed. It was a great conversation and I just pray that he is doing ok.
The last monday night meeting it was the inner city's turn to lead it. We did a homeless outreach allowing the other tracks to see what we did this summer. I didn't realize how much I grew in that area until we took them into the city. Most of the other tracks were pretty nervous about it, but seeing that I wasn't made me realize the heart God has given me for the homeless. He allowed me to be strong with my faith and see how much He loves them just as much as He loves me.
That Sunday we went to the church where we would be working our last week of ministry...Rehoboth Open Bible Church...a Caribbean church that lasted 3 hours. Their community was amazing...spending all day together praising God through everything they did. During church we stood up to introduce ourselves and since I was sitting on the end, the pastor asked me to "testify"...I had no idea what was going on, but I stood there and told me shortened testimony. After church, a lot of the people told me how encouraging it was. That right there was super encouraging to me! So, that week at Rehoboth we worked at their summer camp with about 30 kids ranging from ages 4 to 15. I worked with the preschoolers who were just adorable. Even though a few kids gave us all a hard time the entire week, we had a hard time saying goodbye to them. It was the saddest goodbye since we had been there.

We still had 4 days in New York for debriefing, site seeing, spending time together, and parties. It didn't hit me that we were leaving until Saturday night at the 80s party. The staff made a slide show from the summer and I couldn't help but cry. I had spent 5 weeks with these 18 people and we became a family...a very unique family haha. Sunday and Monday night was spent staying up super late with my project family...playing games and talking. We ever took a late night trip to McDonald's which was super cool to see the city empty. Tuesday night we had our banquet which was a very nice dinner, a closing meeting with slide shows, and a dance party. The whole time I was just sad thinking that time Wednesday we would all be home. That night a group of us pulled an all nighter...not wanting to waste our last night together sleeping. We went to time square at 330am acting crazy...just to say goodbye to my roomie Kelly in just an hour. It was really weird. We watched the sun rise on the roof, layed around trying to stay awake, and played games. It was so hard to say goodbye to everyone...especially the few that I got super close with. Dayne and Nichole became like my brother and sister and I hated saying bye to them.