A little after 6:00pm we met back up as a “large” group of eighteen and headed down the street to a church, where we got our job assignments for the evening and a tour of part of the Shanghai Tunnels under the building that were once used for human trafficking. (The tunnels have been closed down and sealed off for years, but Portland is still a major US hub for human trafficking.)
While we were underground, more than a hundred additional volunteers had shown up for the “Night Strike,” to serve food, wash feet, cut hair, hand out clothes, paint nails, help with paperwork, pick up trash, and just generally hang out under the Burnside bridge.
We sang a few worship songs with them and then split up into our work teams for a quick orientation. Our kids were on every possible under-the-bridge work team (there were also “walkabout” and prayer walk teams who did things similar to what we spent the afternoon doing), and, from what I saw and heard, they jumped in and continued to legitly act out the things that they learn every Sunday.
There are not very many things that consistently scream out to me, “This is Church the way that it was meant to be!” The Reservation on Tuesday nights is one of them. Night Strike is another one.
Those. Hours. Are. Worship.
Getting to be there, and getting to be there with that group of teenagers, was right up on the list with Winter Retreat. I love those kids, and I love seeing them love others. Every moment of watching them serve (strangers or each other) ranks as a “coolest moment ever,” and makes my heart kind of want to leap out of my chest.
Points to the kids for not stopping when they were tired or just wanted to hang with their friends instead of more strangers.
(part 3 in the next post)
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