NY SM Week 5!

Week 5 is in the books! My goal is to write a more in-depth post next week about the ways we saw God working this summer and what He did in our students’ lives, so let this just serve as a brief overview of our week, and not the final summation of the summer mission.

This week, we had our final staff meeting, had seminars for the students to attend (boundaries in relationships, transitioning out of college, and financial stewardship), walked the Brooklyn Bridge, took our group photo in Brooklyn, ate delicious pizza at Juliana’s in Brooklyn, went to campus for 4 days, had the last Bible study and discipleship appointments, ethnic dinner, had our staff banquet, and had our final celebration banquet with both staff and students. Which is actually going on right now, but due to a kid who got strep throat TODAY instead of waiting until project was over tomorrow, I am at home writing this post instead 🙁

Our goal for the entire project was not only for our students and staff to see God change, grow, and transform their own lives in significant ways, but that they would step out in faith to have good conversations and see what God was going to do on campus with other students through them. Our goal was that we would see 10 students place their faith in Jesus, and we are excited to say, we have ended our summer mission seeing 11 students place their faith in Jesus! Yay for answered prayers! We are so proud of our students and staff. I love seeing how far God brings them in having good spiritual conversations from the first week to the last….such growth! Here are the people who made decisions this week (minus Israel who didn’t feel comfortable getting his picture taken).

This girl below, was so sincere, and she prayed for like 3 minutes quietly to God (even with people constantly walking by in a busy area of campus) when she was asking Him to forgive her sins and begin a relationship with her.

Here is our complete project picture!

One of my very, very favorite parts of project (besides seeing God cause so much growth!) is that my kids get to regularly interact with staff and students who not only love the Lord, but who sincerely love on them. These pictures are just a few examples.

Here are a few pictures of our time eating at Juliana’s and taking pictures at the Brooklyn Bridge area.

Ed, thanks for being a great dad and husband even in the midst of a challenging, exhausting, and work-filled summer. You have served us well and this family wouldn’t function without you!

And this picture shows our amazing leadership team for the NYC Summer Mission. Meghan, Ellen, and Ed, thanks for making leading something this big and challenging and God-sized a great adventure and lots of fun. Thanks for your grace, truth, and hard work – we worked like dogs but had a blast in the process. I have loved no drama and lots of fun – it was a blessing from the Lord to work with ya’ll!

We spent some time of the weekend showing my cousin Makenzie around the city and visiting her “bucket list” places like Washington Square Park (where we saw an awesome performance by both some dancers and our kids 🙂 ), eating cookie dough at Do, and visiting Chinatown.

For our ethnic dinner this week, we had food delivered from a food truck called Makina Cafe. The really, really fun part is that Makina Cafe (specializing in Ethopian/Eritrean food) is owned and ran by my old college roommate (who was also in our wedding). I loved being able to give her business and taste her delicious food, but the ultimate best was being able to hug her sweet neck. So proud of you Eden!

The girls had their last day of school followed by a visit to the theaters to see “Incredibles 2”. They are going to miss their friends and teachers, but are excited for a more relaxed pace and time with us.

We had our nice staff dinner at a restaurant on the water in lower Manhattan overlooking the Statue of Liberty. Then, we headed to Chinatown to eat dessert at this place called Milk and Creme cereal bar, where you get ice cream mixed with cereal and toppings. Delicious! Little did we know, the night was going to get interesting. We had an incident on our train where a guy who were clearly impaired got in a couple of our staff guy’s faces and tried to fight them (at our stop, he got off the train and got back on while arguing with another guy so who knows what happened when they left our station)…having been here in the city for a while, it was a bit scary and I really thought the guy was going to attack them (which would have been crazy in a group with 4 guys and one of them having police training and one of the girls having a black belt in 3 forms of martial arts). Then, after dessert, we tried to get on a train but the station was filled with smoke, nasty smells, and nasty noises and we learned that a train was stuck on a track and there were no uptown trains going that way. We tried uber. We tried another train which went a few stops before getting stopped because there was an incident on the last train car and they needed to investigate. We tried uber again. And then, we finally ditched it all and took the Long Island Rail Road back to Queens. Talk about a crazy night and having issues getting home. I told Ed it had to be a full moon (which of course we can’t see in the city) and sure enough, I found out that it was.

Again, I would love to share more about what God has taught me this summer and what He has done in our staff and students’ lives, but thats a whole ‘nother post. Til next time!

2 thoughts on “NY SM Week 5!

Leave a Reply