Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Philadelphia - Day 4

Our trip is half over! And to be honest, it shoes, we have done a lot of work, so much that many of us have been reassigned to new projects for today. Thank you again for all your prayers and support, follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to see all sorts of fun pictures and quick little stories throughout the day. But for now, here are three stories from our students serving here in Philly.



Hey. We made it to Philly. Yay. The first 2 days we worked in a garden. I didn’t pace myself well the first day so I felt like throwing up but hey, pain is gain. Today we worked with children. Our job was to tutor the children because they are way behind in school. Oh Boy I had to work with the kindergarteners. WE had to help them count and write letters. I thought it would be fairly easy. NO I was very wrong! One girl started to count 1..2..3..7..20..100. It was very frustrating. When I tried to help them they said they could do it all by themselves and then started to count wrong again. I had to crack the whip on some of the children a couple of times. We tutored them for 3 hours and then it was song and reading time. I passed out on the chair while Mattheus read a very boring book about gorillas. You should have seen me. I had my mouth wide open. Then it was play time. I tried to Double Dutch which didn’t turn out to be amazing. One little girl asked me if I was African which was a first.  When we were done working for the day we went to see the Liberty Bell and The Independent Hall.  I also got a Philly Cheesesteak. I ended up giving half of my Philly Cheesesteak to a Hobo because I knew I couldn’t eat it all.  In return he taught me how to correctly hitch-hike. 
We had a very interesting dinner. We had to sit in assigned seats. I ended up sitting with Lauren, Isaac, Evan, Brady, and Troy. I ended up asking lots of questions about God , Jesus and His angels which led around to the book series The Immortal Instruments which is all about Angels and their children. I’m sorry if anything is spelled wrong or the grammar is wrong. Its almost 11 at night and I’m really tired. –Emily

So far all I have really done is kill plants. Severe weeding day one and day two and on day three we cleaned out plants that were too far into season to be beneficial. I wish I could do a little more work in the actual community but honestly the gardening has been very relaxing, minus the heat. Tonight we went to probably the most amazing church service I’ve ever been to! The passion and the energy the people had was amazing to see. I don’t think I could ever forget that if I even tried. The feeling of God all around us was almost surreal. The pastor had such a good message! The time scramble is pretty tight and lights out is in exactly 5 mins. Philly is great city and I’ve had such a great time!
See y’all. –Adam

Today I handled 10,000 pounds of food! WOW! Divided it was about 7,100 pounds of donated foods, 1,600 pounds of moldy grapes, which we composted, and the rest was cabbage. When handling the various donated foods we were checking expiration dates, that was kind of hard being that they were so tiny. The grapes had to be dumped out of their packing and then dumped into the smelly compost pile, it was very ripe. I had to shovel one load into the compost pile, and it was very scary… Especially since I almost fell into the pile, one of my feet slipped and it was very scary… the cabbage had to be peeled in the forty degree freezer… I was thankful that I brought pants and a sweatshirt. One of the best parts of my day was showering, I kind of smelled like cabbage and moldy grapes. We ended the day with a church service at the nearby Baptist church. They did things very different than us there; they were very vocal throughout the service. It was nice to see a different type of service than our own. It is late, goodnight! See you all Saturday! -Rachel

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