Chicago

Well, it looks like I made it to Friday!! Its been a crazy busy first week... I never thought I could soak up so much information in such a short amount of time. Through this week, we have been visiting all of the ministry sites we will be serving at this Summer, learning about the people we get to serve and how passionately we all want to show the light of Christ to those who are broken here.  We have also been studying our prayer tours that take about 1.5 to 2 hours. All of us have been educated about the city each day, and some things seriously have stuck out to me. Here in Chicago there are 100,000 gang members, only 10% of children who start kindergarten will graduate, and the average lifespan of a gang member is 21. Since the Chicago Public School system is so in debt (900 MIL), there are schools closing. When that happens, schools have to combine which causes rival gangs to combine as well. Even school here is incredibly dangerous. Learning about the city has been not only physically, but emotionally exhausting. I'm blessed to have a great group of staff with me to process the start to an incredible summer.

In case you guys aren't familiar with CSM and what it does, I'll give you a (quick) rundown. In a week, after training, we will be receiving groups from all over America. Each group will be assigned a city host (which is what I am), and we are there to take our groups to all of the ministry sites and serve with them, take them to restaurants and give them a prayer tour of the city. We are there to process with the groups what they are seeing and debriefing with them at the end of each day.

Yesterday was the much anticipated day. We received our anchor sites!! This is the place that we will be working at each day throughout the summer, and we will have other, not so consistant, sites at night such as food pantries, homeless shelters, etc. My anchor site is a place called CCO, Cornerstrone Community Outreach. This is a homeless shelter in uptown Chicago.. located in one a pretty rough place. My groups will be in charge of putting on a VBS each day. I'm really excited for the connections I will make with the kids there.. and already praying for their hearts. As you can probably guess, these children are prone to fighting - its just what they know. Please pray with me for this incredible ministry site and what God is going to do. I will be switching from this place to a place called By The Hand every other week with another CSM staff. There we will be working with low-income children who are struggling in school. I haven't learned as much about this site, but I am excited for it as well. :)

This past week, I've learned that reading maps isn't so scary after all :) I've learned how to get to places and that was one huge concern of mine coming into this Summer. All together, everything has wonderfully fell into place this week. I'm anticipating groups coming in about a week, but for now I will enjoy the rest of tonight off AND tomorrow with the other CSM hosts. After a few 15 hour days in a row, it is much needed. :)