Wonder Voyage 2009 Summer Blog

After fighting the rain on their drive from Dallas the team from Irving Bible Church arrived safely to their new home, the Pilgrims Retreat Center in Memphis TN. This community center is part of a local church in the Cooper-Young section of town. There are constant outreaches happening throughout the day. The theme for this week is reconciliation and given the role Memphis has played in the Civil Rights Movement, and the role the Pilgrims House plays in the community, it is a fitting title.

Dinner was the first thing on everyones mind though, so immediately after unloading it was time to head down the block to Central BBQ for an original Memphis meal.

However, before heading back to the Pilgrims House the team made a quick stop at the Piggly Wiggly to pick up their supplies to make Stone Soup. The challenge for the week is for two teams of the youth to orchestrate two separate meals without any help from the leaders and on a very tight budget. It looks like it will be a competition between chili and tacos.

Throughout the week this team from Irving Bible Church will be face-to-face with the need for more reconciliation work. Serving in local homeless shelters, the local projects, and through the time they spend building relationships with the people of Memphis this week will be spent serving as ambassadors for Christ, learning what it really means to be reconciled.

As I think back on this last week, its tough to adequately describe the impact of the St. Nick’s team in Memphis. We served everywhere we went, helping people who needed clothes, food or just a simple handshake and conversation. This team brought Christ’s love everywhere they went. They did everything asked of them, voluntarily and and with team work and great joy- I know that God will bless them for it.

I am honored to be a part of this team, who can honestly call themselves family and friends of God.

There’s a myth we at WV frequently like to dispel: teenagers are lazy.

After a late night of fireworks, you would think that a 6:30 service
project (on a Sunday) would cause a small riot with a group of high
school students. Fortunately for Matt and myself, this simply wasn’t the case.

We were up and going at 5:45, ready to serve the homeless. I heard no complaints or protests or whining. We are all here and ready to do the work of Christ. It’s beautiful to see how God works in us and through us. It’s especially beautiful when that work defies expectations.

Later today, we will be setting out for Beale Street and a a very
probable afternoon nap.

Our 4th began with some preparation for our Sunday mission, in which
we will be serving breakfast to the homeless at the historic Calvary
Episcopal Church in downtown Memphis. This church is one of the oldest buildings in the city- built 1844- and has been continuously serving
the community since then.
We added our manpower to the skeleton holiday weekend crew, finishing a job that was supposed to take three hours in roughly forty-five minutes. In all the mission that we’ve
done so far, God has allowed us to bless not only the needy, but those
who serve the needy as well.

Later in the evening, we participated in the most sacred of American
activities: baseball and fireworks! Here all of Memphis felt our
“ministry of presence” too. Our team and the kids from Shine in the
Dark (the ministry in the projects) successfully lead the entire
stadium in two rounds of the wave. Though we were slightly confused at
who we were supposed to cheer for (Weston cheered for/heckled the opposition’s right fielder), we were the loudest in the stadium by
far.

Today took us to two vastly different groups p of people. After a brief
time of reflection on the Mississippi River, we traveled to a nearby park to eat lunch. All of the kids packed a couple extra sandwiches in order to bless some of the homeless there. There we met Rockin Ronnie, an itinerant musician who had come to Memphis with hopes of stardom and lost everything in the bars and clubs on Beale Street. As we listened to his story, we realized that it is only through the grace of God that we aren’t in the same place.

The second part of our day revolved around Graceland, the famous home of another itinerant musician, Elvis Presley. The house is indisputably impressive. We saw, however, that Ronnie and Elvis weren’t so different. Both needed love and friendship and community. All of Elvis’s wealth and Ronnie’s lack thereof didn’t make a
difference when it came to what was truly important.

We spent our morning exploring the National Civil Rights Museum
in downtown Memphis. The site rests at the motel where Martin Luther
King JR was assassinated, and contains numerous exhibits detailing the
struggle for equality and freedom. The lessons we learned there were
made brutally clear in the afternoon, when we ventured into the
projects to hand out flyers.

The flyers advertised the evening, in which we have distributed second-hand clothes, shoes and toys to those in need. As we
watched people go pick out things that most of us would have thrown
away, two police officers approached me, curious about our work there.
When I explained our purpose in serving there, he said: “that’s great-
no one ever comes down here.”

Today we saw inequality and injustice and though we do not naively think we can heal years of damage, we can show the love of Christ in a tangible way that reaches across that barrier.

Our team from Saint Nicholas came in today with the theme of All for One. It was evident that the team came ready as a
community. We settled into our accommodations and ate some Memphis-style fried chicken, but they were eager to serve,
explore and grow as a community.

This group treats each other with such kindness and respect- I think its going to be a great week.