Bridgetown 2

Wednesday morning, they split up into teams for a prayer walk with the exhortation that, "What missional people (intentional Christians) are passionate about, they pray for." And, off they went, map in hand, leaders trotting after them like obedient puppies, instructed only to intervene if they were about to put themselves in legitimate danger. Which, in the case of Jessica's team, this week, meant never.

My team of four managed to check all of the suggested "stops" off the guide sheet with pro map reading skills and minimal discussion, but in the most random order possible. Just because we're cool like that.

They wandered down to the waterfront at the direction of one of the girls and stood to move on at a moment picked by our only guy. Not thirty seconds later, we "happened upon" a teenage girl who was out of phone minutes but needed to call a friend.

She supplied none of her information, just smiled and thanked us, but they heard her when she laughed the way that teenagers do and mentioned that no one else would let her borrow a phone because they all thought she might steal it. They stood respectfully when she made her call and didn't push it when she left, but they listened, and they remembered the story that they were allowed to hear. 

They remembered the girl who was their age, who had spent the night with a group of drunk traveling kids, and who was waiting by the fountain, in a city she didn't know, for friends who were running two hours late. 

And, like all of the other teams, they came back and shared those stories with their friends, creating a web of stories and wrapping a layer of reality around these people whom they were passing. Because, it's not just in Haiti that our kids notice everything.

Their next challenge involved a scavenger hunt.

My team = slightly less than competitive. But, we did get some Voodoo donuts at one of our stops, and took a moment to pose when a man who was houseless offered to take our picture near a wall of painted doors.

Pretty sweet, seeing as we don't exactly have anything like this wall in Tri-Town.

We may have come in dead last on the scavenger hunt, but, when we moved on to delivering kids' club flyers to an apartment complex in Gresham, they put their logical sides to use and busted through their assigned buildings with a friendly efficiency.

The first few doors were an exercise in how-much-do-I-really-want-to-be-willing-to-serve-in-whatever-way-they-ask, but, classic Bethel kids, they put on their game faces and got it done anyways. And, within three answered doors, they were pro. One upstairs. One downstairs. The other pair the next set of doors down. And, pretty soon, they were collecting flyers from other teams, because they had delivered all of theirs.

If you ever need people to canvas for an event, I've got your team!

Lunch happened somewhere in there, as well as our only sit down dinner as a team. And, then, we sent them out, armed with sandwiches, hot coffee, and clean socks, to find stories and faces, to let real voices paint them a better picture of life on the streets.

They met Dave, who wants to run for Mayor of Portland; Terri, who got kicked out of his apartment complex after he flipped the manager the bird for bullying other seniors; Papa Wolf, a vet who rode a motorized wheelchair and made sure that the street kids had everything they needed; the Guardian, who watched over people while they slept and kept their stuff safe while they were awake and who had provided a safe place in the center of the park for those who were not a part of the clash between some Occupiers and the police.

And, they met some street kids who offered them a ride in their shopping cart and some beer, until one retracted the offer of beer with the statement, "No, they're too little for that."

They came back together to share stories of this community that had been so willing to teach them, and, then, in a classic youth group move, we fed them each a Voodoo donut, gave the sugar a few minutes to settle in, and then announced that it was time for bed. Ha!

But, eventually they did go to bed, on the floor of a church, with only whatever three items they had chosen to bring from the bunkhouse.

Thursday morning, we got eighteen females up and ready in ten minutes or less. No changing of clothes, and the potential for either brushing teeth, brushing hair, or putting on deodorant, but not all three. Blankets had been shared all night. Hairbrushes had been shared. Deodorant had been shared.

Toothbrushes. Not so much.

And, then, they were released. "Come back at 4:00pm. Eat somewhere in between if you can, but not someplace another team has already been. Good luck."

And, we got to explore just how far their good attitudes could stretch, which, was, apparently, pretty stinking far. (One snack sized bag of Sun Chips at 2:00, some leftover pastry from another group at 4:00, and they were good to go until dinner - 8:00 for some of them, 10:00 for the others.)

They wandered the length of downtown - several times - in the hunt for food, made a semi-serious attempt at spanging, talked with a friend from the night before, made the world's quickest tour of a mall, and hung out in a giant fountain. 

They discovered the frustration of having nothing but time to spend when you are hungry and the peace of having nothing but time to spend when you just want to relax. They realized a little more of how hard it would be to get a job while living with no food security. And, they decided that, if time really were money, people who were homeless would pay more for their meals than just about anyone else. 

(On average, our teams waited 1.5-2 hours in line at a soup kitchen. Multiply by three meals a day, and you are potentially putting in a six hour work day just to eat.)

From there, they worked under the bridge at Night Strike, serving food, picking up trash, greeting people and sitting down with them, giving out clothes, painting nails, and washing feet. This, down here, this is how Church should be. 

They served with everything they had - and caught the eye of more than one BT staff member with their willing service - and then came back to bunkhouse and let the volume fly. (So many thoughts and feelings. Not enough words to express. Must. Act. CRaZy!)

But, classic Bethel kids: boys' rooms are on one side of the staircase; girls' rooms are on the other, so, not matter how hyper loud we get, we will continue to talk with each other from across the divide. Because, well, "No purple!"