A lot has happened this summer that I need to catch you up on! Since I had decided that I wasn’t going to be taking any classes for the summer, I figured that my summer would be fairly dull. The first part of the summer was as I expected, but the last part ended up becoming very busy and adventuresome. Morningside Baptist, my church in Tallahassee, was taking a group to New York City to help a pastor who was starting a new church in a part of New York. There were a few empty slots open for people to come, so I decided to go… Our group teamed up with Olive Baptist Church in Pensecola, so we had a big group of about 30 or so.
We left on Friday, August 5, and drove to Jacksonville, which is where we flew out of on Saturday morning. We arrived in NYC around 10:00am on Saturday and were taken to our home for the next week. I was able to see firsthand the driving and traffic atmosphere in New York, while we all feared for our lives, being driven around by the shuttle service we hired. I don’t think it would have made much difference, had I closed my eyes. We arrived at the MNYBA (Metropolitan New York Baptist Association), and became instantly acquainted with the 81 stairs (one way) up to the floor in which we were staying. Yes, the building did have an elevator, but since it was built in the 1920’s, the elevator was manual and could only be run by certain people in the building. So, we all came away from the trip with a lot more leg muscle than we went in with.
After we all claimed our beds and laid our bags down, we went down to the Subway station, which was at the corner of our block, thank goodness, and purchased our Subway cards for the week. After that, we split up, ate lunch and came back to the MNYBA building for our orientation with the couple who runs the building. Once that was over, we had free time for sight-seeing for the rest of the day. I was glad that my Dad went on this trip, because we spent all of our sight-seeing time together, which was fun and adventuresome at times. I had so many things that I wanted to see and take pictures of, so he just let me take him wherever I wanted to go, which was pretty much all over NYC. We ended up in Times Square that evening, which is beautiful at night with all the lights.
The next day, which was Sunday, we had a worship service at the MNYBA building. After lunch, we packed 2000 honey buns and juice boxes into bags, which we were to be handing out on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday mornings to those getting on the Subway and heading to work. In the bags were flyers and information about the new church in Inwood (a part of New York City), that was starting up.
Each of those three mornings, after we handed out all of our bags for the day, we had a worship service at a Spanish church in Inwood, where the pastor of the new church spoke to us. After lunch, we all split up into three different groups. Some stayed in Inwood. This involved cleaning up the park, playing and ministering with the kids who visited the park. Another group went to Harlem to minister to the West African Muslims. Something that I thought was interesting is that the second largest West African Muslim tribe is in NYC. The last group, which is the group that I chose to be a part of, went back to the MNYBA building and helped with construction, painting, or whatever needed to be done with the building.
Thursday night, we all helped set up for a Christian rap concert at a church in Inwood, which was mainly held to publicize the new church. When we weren’t involved in any of the missional activities, we were free to sight-see. I wanted to see as many things as I could in the short amount of time that we had. We rode the Staten Island Ferry past the Statue of Liberty, saw Ground Zero, Times Square, Madison Square Garden, Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Bryant Park, and Parson’s School of Design (Project Runway!!), Julliard School of the Arts, and a couple of other things. There were still MANY other things that we didn’t get to see, but I hope to go back someday soon. One of my favorite things that my Dad and I were able to do was ride bikes through Central Park. I never realized how big Central Park really is. We didn’t get to see everything in the park, but what we did see was beautiful.
We must have walked 50 miles throughout the entire week. Just walking around NYC is awesome…it’s definitely an entire different atmosphere than what I live in. Overall, we had an awesome trip and I can’t wait to go back one day.
No comments:
Post a Comment