meet the family

So now that I have reached my last week with YouthWorks, I figured it was about time to introduce you to the people I have worked and lived with for the past three months.

(Brad, me, Sara, Johnny)

(Sara, Brad, Matt, me)

Chicago 1 & 2!

beefy lessons

Every week I have the splendid opportunity to brown about 35-50 pounds of beef for our sloppy joe and taco meals. Let me tell you this has not been one of my favorite parts of the summer, especially since the meat we buy is 27% fat making for endless amounts of grease. I’ve figured that by the end of the summer I will have spent at least 40 hours browning beef. Let me tell you, this has not been a highlight of my summer. However the amount of time I have spent in the kitchen in this manner has provided space for some good thoughts and lessons. So I thought I would share with you a few...

Beefy lessons
•Never buy beef that is 27% fat. If you must wear an apron to avoid lots of grease stains.
•Turn up the music and sing it out. As much as I disliked the meat days, it many times provided me with a chance to escape—not having to worry about anyone else being around, turning up the music of the hour, and singing.
•It’s all about perspective. I’m an introvert, so many times browning the meat would give me space to take a step back from whatever else was going on around me to get some perspective and clarity on things.
•Don’t take yourself out mentally. I am a pro at this; as my mom says I’m my own worst enemy. It helps to identify when those negative thought cycles start and shut them down before there is a chance to take yourself out with negative thoughts.
•Talk to God out loud.
•In the words of our generation, 'just dance, gonna be okay, da-da-doo-mm-da.' But really, it's a release, just dance it out.
•Don’t use a metal spatula on a non-stick pan; it will scratch up the stuff that makes it non-stick.
•Put a fan in your kitchen. Standing over an oven for hours can get a bit toasty.
•Don’t give people the space to do it alone. I hated the fact that I had both of the meat meals, yet one of the most encouraging things is when one of my fellow staff members would come in and ask if I needed help with anything. Though often the answer would be no, just the notion that someone is there and ready to help provides a huge source of encouragement.
•If you are cooking for masses of people, get someone else to do the dishes. I’m so glad that we had students on site to take care of the dishes after dinner.

faithful

This weekend I had some of my highschool small group girls from Upland come and visit. It was great to see them and see them experience a bit of Chicago—we ate at Giordano’s, went along the lake front, Navy Pier, Millennium Park, and the absurdity known as Macy’s.

Over the past three years I’ve been a volunteer at Upland Community Church’s youth group, and it’s been an amazing experience to see how much change can happen over the course of three years. As the girls were driving away I remembered the beginning of the school year with our small group. God brought an incredible co-leader, Carie, to lead with me, but when we saw the groups of girls in our group we wondered how in the world is this going to work out?

It was an odd mix of girls, and the first months or so were rough. Yet as I watched them drive away this weekend I was left in awe of God’s faithfulness. It’s incredible how far we’ve come since last September. The girls have accepted each other, vulnerability has happened, and they have grown together.

Being involved with the youth at UCC is one of the most difficult and rewarding things that I have done. As I am getting ready to enter into my fourth year with these students I can’t help but see how faithful God has been.

working it out

Due to our 90 hour work week with YouthWorks every week, there’s not a lot of time to work out which can be a difficult thing for me. I really do love it when I am able to get out and run during the week; unfortunately this job has us up at 6:30 or earlier and going till midnight or often later. But I’ve created somewhat of a plan to deal with this.

Every Monday I go to our ministry site, Casa Central, to hang out with Spanish-speaking senior citizens. Not only is it a blast to be able to hang out with these people, hear all of their crazy stories, and speak Spanish, but they have an aerobics class every Monday. There’s nothing like marching in place and doing ab workouts to 80’s music re-recorded to have the same rhythm with 70 and 80 year-olds. I love it.

On top of that every Wednesday I have karate classes. I kid you not! Wednesdays I’m at a kid’s club all day where they bring in a karate instructor for three hours. It’s hilarious to watch as the instructor tries to get 5-13 year olds to all focus and do what he says. Every Wednesday afternoon I get to come home and show the boys (that being Brad and Johnny) what amazing karate skills I learned that day.
I’m going to be a karate master by the end of the summer.

Changing up the workout routine…got to love it.


stretching it out before karate class

the city

There’s an exhilarating feeling that comes with living in the city—all of the people, diversity, the accessibility of everything, the adventure, there’s always something new and it is never boring. I’ve really enjoyed living in Chicago, especially in Humboldt Park (got to love speaking in Spanish).

Yet while the exciting aspects of the city still remain, many of the harsh realities also became more vivid than ever this week. One of our staff members was sitting out on our stoop one evening as was robbed at gunpoint. He wasn’t walking around the streets, or even the sidewalks, he was just on our stoop! Needless to say, sleep was low and emotions were extremely high this week. YouthWorks was quick to respond in putting our site as a top priority crisis, but there’s not a lot that can be said or done in a situation like this.

Within a day the neighborhood and community that I had felt so comfortable in faded away. I’ve passed the crack house down the street more than ten dozen times, but suddenly it seemed real. The drunks and high folk that walk the streets stood out all the more. Every door that the participants left propped open became an opportunity for something to happen. The gang signs graffitied on the walls seemed to be everywhere. Sentiments of security had vanished all within a matter of 30 minutes.

We managed to make it through the week down a staff member and with many cups of coffee and much grace. Now I’m left with these conflicting feelings, and it is so easy to let fear creep in. I was talking with Sara, one of our staff members and my boss, and she was talking about how there’s a voice that just keeps saying throw in the towel. It’s not safe; you’ve gone through too much; just leave. It is an easy lie to believe, and one that I think the church and Christians have fallen for many times. But that can’t be an option; we can’t live dominated by fear.

So right now we’re learning what it looks like to stay. To see and be fully aware of both side of the city, yet decide to stay and have a presence.


please be praying for our staff as one of us has left, a new has joined though we're not sure for how long, and we've been hit hard throughout this whole week.

the norm

This week is our third group of participants on site out of eight. Already I am feeling the drain of doing the same thing continuously for eight weeks in a row. It’s a little different too, because unlike camps, the students that come to our sites already have adult leaders with them—we’re just here to iron out the details, get them plugged in, and try to steer them in the right direction.

Tonight I felt that drain unlike any other. For the first time in a long time I had some time to think. We had an hour before club (our nightly church service type thing), and Brad and I had finished setting up the chapel. So while Brad was chillin and playing guitar, I got to think and be.

The summer has been an immense challenge and I’m not even half way through it. After the semester abroad I feel as if I’m still making cultural adjustments especially moving back into an extremely Christian environment. As I sat there wrestling with God and my own thoughts, there was a great feeling of purpose and meaninglessness. I have no idea why I’m here or why YouthWorks is here or the 70-80 participants that come every week. And it’s with those doubts that I entered into our club time.

But for some reason last night, God decided to make it clear to me that he is at work here. To make a long story short there ended up being three students crying, adult leaders saying that they had some of the best conversation in church group time following, and our neighbors who came to sit in for the evening said that was exactly what they needed to hear. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that these are signs of greatness or that making people cry is the perfect symbol of spiritual growth or challenge, but all of that served as a sign that there was something going on. That for some reason God is using what we’re doing though many times it feels pointless. That feeling is fleeting, but I’m learning that for this summer it will be something that I have to trust.

I still don’t know how or why I am here or how God is working through this thing called YouthWorks, but he is and for some reason I’m here in the middle of it. Thank you, God, that you can use people like me.

the real world: chicago

First of all I’ll apologize for being terrible at posting anything these past few weeks. Now that we have our third group of students, things are slowing down, so you can expect more updates.

So last week I was talking with our area director, Jason, who has been working at YouthWorks for the past 10 years in a variety of roles. Jokingly he said that working for YouthWorks is kind of like The Real World, that being the MTV show (thought I would clarify), but it did have some validity to it especially during the first three weeks.

Let’s just take a look at this for a minute…

“This is the true story [yep, we’re living in a true story this summer]… of seven strangers [well, there’s only four of us, but for a week we did have nine people]…picked to live in a house [in this case a small apartment]…work together [check]…and have their lives taped [so we have a video crew whose coming this week—no joke. plus when you have 70+ high school students watching you, you might as well have your life taped]…to find out what happens…when people stop being polite and start being real [we like to think that we can have both of those and still love each other]…The Real World: Chicago.”

Yep, you get randomly placed to live in a city you don’t know with three or more strangers for three months while trying to somehow work together to lead short term high school mission trips every week. All that to say, I’m so grateful for my team this summer—they’re amazing! At first I was a bit worried about how things would work out and how we’d all fit together, but now that we celebrated our one month anniversary together this weekend, I couldn’t imagine being with another group of people. Life is never boring with Sara, Matt, and Brad.

six

As a coffee-drinking, outdoor-loving daydreamer, I’ve found a place that would make many six-year-olds jealous.

I have my own playground.

I know reading this, you are all pretty jealous, but truly this is a great thing. The school that our apartment is attached to and where the participants stay has its own playground. It makes a perfect escape to steal away for a cup of coffee, swing on the swings, or get lost is a good book. And to continue in my childlikeness I’ve been reading the original Peter Pan book. If you haven’t read this you’re missing out; that’s all I have to say.

I'll share more about our first week of programming later, but right now I'll continue pretending that I am six.

the invasion

After a week of training and two weeks of preparation, we finally have students on our site! Sunday afternoon was the kickoff for our summer of mission trips in the Humboldt Park area with 50 students from all over. I cannot even begin to explain how exciting it is to have students and to be able to see the purpose of the past three weeks.

Yesterday, Monday, was the first full day of programming. I got wake up at 5:30 to make breakfast, and later got to lead a work crew to an organization called Casa Central. It was phenomenal! I spent the majority of the day playing bingo and dominos, dancing, making arts and crafts, and chatting in Spanish with senior citizens (all who are in this facility are Hispanic, the majority Puerto Rican). It's so good to be talking in Spanish again.

As a part of my position, I lead and organize all of the evening activities. So later that night I took a group of 50 students on the EL down to Millennium Park, and the amazing part is that it couldn’t have gone any better! Our system of getting students on the train and then walking to the park worked surprisingly well, and all of the students were all on time. We even got back to the site a half an hour early—it was truly incredible.

These first few days have been a bit hectic and rest is scarce, but we’re getting things figured out. Fortunately this is a small week of programming (only 50 people as opposed to the typical75), which has been a huge help. On top of that we have another YouthWorks team at our site to help kick off the first week before we both have to run our own independent sites. What makes it even better is that one of the staff members on the other site is a Taylor person; it has been good to have someone around who I am used to seeing outside of YouthWorks.

Week 1: two days down, three to go.

settling in

We’ve been here in Humboldt Park for a week now and I finally feel like I can say I’ve settled in. Actually this feeling occurred in a matter of minutes that happened five minutes ago. What was that defining moment?

I found my local coffee shop. I think everyone finds comfort in one place or another, and for me it’s Saturday mornings in a coffee shop. For the past two years in Upland, it was every Saturday at Paynes; in Costa Rica, Entre Pan; and now in Chicago, Atlas Café. Its artsy, internationally themed, has free wireless and good coffee, a three block walk from where I'm staying, and I’m loving it.

Saturday mornings you’ll know where to find me.

here we go

Okay, I’ve gotten my break from blogging in, and now I’m back at it.

So you might just be wondering how much can happen in just one month. The answer to that question is a whole heapin’ ton. In the past month or so I’ve been in 3 countries, 7 states, and slept in 12 different beds—a bit ridiculous, I know.
But I’ve finally made it to my summer home.

A few days ago we drove down to southern Chicago, where I’ll be for the summer. I’m here with a team of three others in the Humboldt Part area and will be leading week long high school mission trips in the area throughout all of the summer. It’ll be an adventure for sure. So here we go again…