Hello. It is 12:39 a.m. as we start this post. The guys will be posting for the first time. This is because we are lazy. We always promise in the beginning of the day to the girls that we will blog at night… However, we fall asleep, leaving the girls to blog.

For example, an unidentified male this morning stated, “Yes, I will blog tonight.”

This is him… right now as we blog.

12:42 a.m.

Okay.  Now for the details of the day.

We woke up at seven.  And by seven, we mean 7:10… or anything before 8.  Some had breakfast.  Some slept.  Today we had the most amazing cereal ever.  Fruit loops… but wait.  with GOLDEN BARS. =D  There was soy milk for those who are lactose intolerant.

Moving on, after we ate breakfast we had devotionals on Psalm 73.

vs. 25-26 “Whom have I in heaven but you?  And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.  My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”

After devotionals we headed to the inner city missions office to assign tasks to our team.  We split into three teams.  The first team stayed at the inner city missions building to clean the floors.  The second team headed to the VBS location, the Nelson Playground, to clean up the area.  The third team went to Pastor Vega’s daughter’s backyard to clean up the glass and trash.  Many people in the area break the windows and take the aluminum inside of them to later sell for money, leaving the glass behind.

Tom’s finger got cut.  (n00b)

He’s okay.  He got bandaids.

It began to rain as we finished up our work.  Praise God we were able to finish without being drenched.  We headed back to eat lunch, delicious salami, bologna, and cheese sandwiches with “pasta” (ramen noodles).

After lunch, good news came to us.  Pastor Vega told our team that we would be able to paint the first coat of the buildings upper story today instead of doing two coats tomorrow.  So again, we split into groups.  One worked mainly on painting the flat white paint on the walls while the other team went to Nelson Park to do the third day of VBS.  The first group painted all of the walls in time.  Pretty much, everyone messed up their clothes and grew a lot.. of white acne.  =]

Today’s VBS Theme: Jesus is Lord

At VBS there were not many kids outside because of the earlier rain.  Inside the building, however, a few kids were studying.  We played games with them like connect four, checkers, and dominos.  And then we started the VBS by singing songs with them.  Josh, an hyper enthusiastic child, wanted to lead the songs and motions.  He came to the front with the leaders and sang his heart out.  Cute. Very cute.

“Making melodies in my heart…”  “When I get to heaven I’m gonna walk with Jesus…”  “Lord I lift your name on high.”

The skit was next.  Interesting.  Jorge was Peter the disciple in the story of Peter walking on water.  However, because the other disciples were painting back at the office, he assumed he was supposed to say all of the lines… or something like that.  So the skit ended up ending in a minute. HA.  And the kids asked… “Was that it?”  hahaha.  We answered yes.  “It was really short.”  “Do you want an encore?”  “Yes!”  So the second time around, the skit was .. a 100% more successful.  The skit was.. two minutes long.  =D

The craft was a bracelet telling the story of God.  The bracelet had six beads on them.  Black - Our sinful nature.  Red - Jesus’ blood paying the price.  Blue - Jesus’ blood washing our sin away.  White - We’re now pure in His eyes.  Green - now we grow, sanctification.  Yellow - the ultimate end, heaven.  The children were engaged in the activity and learned of the story of God and His son.

We played with them for a little more and then had to leave.

Dinner… was interesting.  Before dinner, we had an ultimate arm-wrestling SHOWDOWN!  It was intense.  On the girl’s side, Katie…  beast.  On the guy’s side, after Edgar showed up everyone by owning them, Ivan owned him, declaring himself as champion.

Dinner was scrumptious.  Turkey, mashed potatoes, and salad.  Yup yup.  Thank God for the hands of the cooks of this trip.  A lot of us had food coma after eating.  After dinner… and watching the Indiana team play boom chika boom boom boom boom, Julius, Pastor Vega’s son, spoke to us.  His passage was focused on Isaiah 61.

He spoke about the importance of community and the individual’s need to adopt a hospitable mind.  Also, he introduced two songs in different languages, one in Chinese and the other in.. an African language.  It was awesome to see his passion for worldy music and how it is used to worship our Father in heaven.

… So remember how we blogged earlier on how we, the guys, were lazy about blogging and just went to sleep because we were tired?  Yeah… So Edgar was with us blogging in the beginning… but now…

Before:

(Eric’s finger, Dave hidden behind the finger, Alex, Sinsub, and Edgar)

After:

He’s snoring loudly.

Anyways.  Moving on.  haha.

After having fellowship after dinner, we headed out the same place as Tuesday night to do outreach with sandwiches, clothing, and the gospel of John to hand out.  This time, we mixed up the groups, intermixing Cornell, Columbia, and Indiana University students.  It was truly a blessing for a lot of us as we were encouraged by fellow Christians, challenged by others, and able to help others.

To account on a personal encounter.  I met a man named Anthony with a drug addiction.  He had onced attended church until the addiction started.  To this day, he said he tried multiple programs to get out.  He says he wants to change, but his body won’t allow him to.  We engaged him about half an hour after he had had a dose of crack.  He had told us this.  He was very glad to have met us, telling us that it had made his day.  My group was just encouraged that God had used us to bring some hope into his life.  He said he wanted to change and would read the Gospel of John when he could.  Another encouraging thing was that… amidst his addiction to drugs and using money solely for drugs… he held onto a cross necklace that someone had given him earlier.  People had offered to buy it from him.  From the looks of it, it looked like to be of some worth.  However, Anthony refused and said… it was something he would hold onto.  He just.. had to.  Hopefully it was a sign that God had not let go of Anthony.  God is still moving in his heart.  And if we could pray for him, that’d be great.

After outreach we left back for home.  We parted with the other teams and returned home to our separate rooms.

The guys had to use the bathroom.. badly.  About eight of us were in line holding our pants.  Bad.

The girls invited us over to use their own bathroom… but it ended up being a surprise.

The guys entered the room to be welcomed by the girls and decorations.  They made us applesauce-base, blueberry cupcakes.  suhweeeeet.  And also, for each one of us, they had construction paper with encouraging statements on each of them hanging from the ceiling.  TO top it off, they had a banner type thing on the wall saying, “Thank you brothers.”  oh.  Lin-Lin drew sheep in relation to our character.  For example… Stu was a sheep with chopsticks in his fur.  (He usually.. no always, has chopsticks in his pants)

Thank you sisters =]

After, we headed over to the Columbia/Indiana team’s place to worship one last time together before they leave tomorrow.  Again, I was reminded of the passage in Revelation 7 when it talks of the Great Multitude in Heaven.  Just seeing all three teams worship together again singing… “How great is Our God” reminded me of the reason for why we were all here.  To proclaim to the ends of the earth, the city of Kensington, that God is great.

It was sweet time of praise.

We left refreshed and headed to bed.  And for us, guys, to blog.  Oh, we found out that the leaders debrief in Joy’s car.  HAHA… HAHA.  How akward is that.  Can you picture five people in one small car.. the two in the front seats turning around uncomfortably to the three in the back talking.  HA.  and a police car drives by while they’re praying at 1 in the morning.  haha.  Praise God.

Thank you for reading.  It’s 1:47 now.  A whole hour of blogging.  But it was worth it.  We owe it to the girls.

Oh, Tom and John just came back in a while ago.  And I was reminded.

Tom’s current status:  Okay after having gotten a cut finger, being pooped on by a bird, being shot in the eye by a stray rubberband by Dave Chen, smacked in the eye by a bible, and whipped in the eye by a sweater.

HA.

Okay.  goodnight.

-Alex, Eric, Dave… (Sinsub and Edgar fell asleep in the middle.  Tom and John came later.)

=D

helloooo from philly!

it’s pretty late at night so i’ll keep this entry really short. we didn’t get to blog yesterday since we had a very long day and everyone was so exhausted. but here are some of the things we did yesterday and today…

tuesday, we woke up around 7, did our devotions, and did construction work at Pastor Frank’s office. the guys cleaned up and sorted out things that needed to get thrown out. the girls cleaned and organized some of the rooms in his office. we were very very efficient! we had some time before lunch so some of us went to the soup kitchen next to Pastor Frank’s office called St. Francis. we handed out gospel of John and talked to the people who came to eat lunch there.

we had hotdogs w/ chili and baked beans (oh! and the famous philly soft pretzels!) for lunch and headed out to do street EV/prayer walking in Kensington. we broke up into 4 different teams and talked to the people in the street or went into the stores to talk to people.

after that we had our first children’s ministry! the weather’s been really beautiful so we got to play with the kids and do children’s ministry outside at the playground. we had praise, skit (5 loaves and 2 fishes) on “Jesus, our Provider,” and arts & crafts. the kids were so so so adorable and cute!! there weren’t that many of them but still all of us got a chance to interact with them.

when we came home after children’s ministry, we went over to the Columbia/Rutgers and Indianan University Teams apartment and had dinner. we made sandwiches for homeless outreach afterwards. we made about 100 sandwiches and headed out to Center City of Philadelphia. our team broke into two groups. group 1 stayed in the “LOVE park” and group 2 went down to the underground train station. we handed out gospel of John, sandwiches, water bottles, and sweaters to homeless people. personally for me, it was a time where i saw a lot of brokeness. seeing some people with no direction, light, and hope was very heart-breaking and i felt very heavy-hearted afterwards. but it was definitely a good burden that i think God gave it to all of us. when we came back from Center City, we lifted the people who we met up in prayer. we are conituously praying for them that God will be their source of hope and joy and that they will find comfort in Him only.

TODAY! we woke up and after devotions, went to the other team’s apartment to talk about Coffeehouse at Pastor Frank’s church, Urban Worship Center (UWC). once again, we broke up into two groups. group 1 went to the baseball field near the playground we do children’s ministry at, to clean up the field. group 2 stayed in the office to organize and clean up. some of us, again, went to St. Francis after doing work at the office. it was surprising and very encouraging to see how so many homeless people were receptive and open to the gospel. it is our prayer that God will water their souls and that they will see and understand His abundant love towards them.

we came back to our apartments for lunch (amazing stir fry with KIMCHI!!! kimchi’s a korean spicy cabbage thing). we had time to rest a little bit after lunch and then went to the playground again for children’s ministry. we had our ministry outdoor, once again, and it was really a lot of fun! children there are very open to us and bright! today’s theme was “Jesus, our Friend.” Anthony, who helps us organize the children’s ministry, ordered pizza for all of us for doing such a great job at the baseball field this morning

we had dinner with the other teams at the office and went to Pastor Frank’s church to have Coffeehouse with the youth group of the church. the Coffeehouse was to encourage the youth group kids at church through skits, testimonies, and praise. 4 people shared their testimonies, including Jorge, and all of them were very very encouraging. it was so evident that God was, is, and will be working in their lives. Pastor Blake from Indiana Team rapped! and Larry sang his orignial song to the group. the UWC youth group prepared a skit on praying and i’m hoping to post a link of that on here soon!

afterwards, we debriefed as an entire group and this was so so good too for some of the brothers and sisters shared their struggles, praises, reflections, etc with the rest of the team. we are really accepting one another as a family and a body of Christ and personally to me, this was such a blessing. it was encouraging to see people praying for one another, saying encouragements, and just really showing love. pray for us so that we’ll be contiuously be a blessing to each other

i can share so much more but it’s 2AM and i’m not even sure if i’m making any sense. hopefully we can post more entries tomorrow when our brains working… on that note, thank you for reading our blogs and for keeping us in your prayers! and praise be to God for He’s been so faithful to us

To recap what seems like a long day of ministry…

I think it’s safe to say it seems like a long day for most of us by sole virtue that we’ve done quite a fair amount on our first official day of ministry. Our day started with construction work at the ICM office. We cleaned floors above the office currently undergoing major renovations and organized storage rooms with boxes of things Pastor Vega has accumulated over the years–things he’s accumulated after 23 years of ministry, meaning it was a lot. haha

We had lunch with the Columbia/Indiana/Rutgers team and headed out to the streets for prayer walking. We walked down the street well-known for its drug-dealing, prostitution, and violence. In fact, Pastor Vega informed us that it was the number one hotspot in Philadelphia known for its illegal activities.

Soon after, we headed out to the neighborhood playground for children’s ministry. Although we were unable to carry out our plans for VBS, we spent the time playing basketball and football with the older kids, while other members of the team spent time with the younger children.

After dinner with the other schools’ teams, we went to the church for praise and for Pastor Vega’s testimony. I think I would be doing Pastor Vega, and most especially, God an injustice by trying to explain the incredible means by which God has used Pastor Vega as a light to Kensington in just one blog entry. In short, through much affliction, sin, and a growing sense of void, God used Pastor Vega in his inadequacy to pour out His grace to this part of the city.

At the end, I think the majority of us returned from our day contemplative of what we’ve seen and heard. The streets of Kensington were enough to convince us of the area’s desperate need for God’s sovereign love and mercy. Many of us shared what seemed to be common feelings of fear of our environment and judgment by the people we were praying for. Thankfully, these things brough to our realization just how inadequate we were as people and how grateful we were to have a loving and powerful God to turn to.

Personally for me, I was blessed to find that no matter how rough around the edges the children that we enountered seemed, children were still children. They were still innocent enough to find enjoyment in what all children need, which is simply people willing to give them the time of day and an encouraging smile for them to continue laughing and playing.

I hope you guys continue to pray for the teams here in Philadelphia and pray for the children and adults here who live amongst such crime, addiction, and violence. Despite the sin and destitution currently pervading this side of Philadelphia, as Pastor Vega continually reiterates, there is light at the end of the tunnel and God will answer to the hope of many who seek something more than what this world can offer.

-Esther L

Hello everyone!

Greetings from Philly again!

Joanna here AGAIN!

HAHA I might be designated blogger but we’re not sure yet hehe.

Anyways, today was quite restful and exciting all at the same time.

So today we got to sleep in a tad bit and had breakfast starting at 9:15am!

We had all different types of cereal and breakfast ended around 9:45am.

We had individual devotions for about 30 to 40 minutes and then had small group devotional for 15 minutes. Our passage was Joel 2 in case anyone was hoping to look it over! 

After that we went to have lunch at the Columbia and Indiana apartment! Hehe, all we do is eat.  

We ate lunch and had fellowship with the other teams and it was fun and edifying!

Then we went to church, and I have to say coming from a traditional Presbyterian Korean church, it was quite an experience!

Praise was really hard to describe. It’s like the experiences that you can’t really understand unless you experience it. Praise was alive, refreshing, powerful and intimate. The people in the church praising were truly worshipping with their hearts and their bodies (literally!).

Everyone was alive and animated and it was really different.

The message was also great, Pastor Vega spoke and really the way he speaks is powerful and moving. He also had people come up to the front who needed to be prayed for, and the act of prayer became something that the entire church became a part of.

For a first hand testimony ask Jorge from Cru? Maybe he’ll share if he’s comfortable! 

We prayed for people who were depressed, sick and in need of healing and we all became one body despite our differences and came to God to ask Him to work in the people’s lives. And really God did work today.

After service we came back home and just rested. (SIESTA!!!) I actually fell asleep for two hours so I don’t really know what happened. Hehe. But it was good sleep!

Then we had AWESOME DINNER OH DEAR REALLY GOOD!!!!!! We had Spanish rice and really good pork. I don’t know how to describe it, it’s like something you had to eat in order to understand. Anyways there were also green beans. Hehe. The lady who cooked for us was Yvonne! She was awesome! Hehe. Tomorrow we’re having chicken apparently. It’ll be awesome!!!

Anyways, after dinner we broke off into our assigned VBS groups and prepped fro tomorrow! I’m in praise and we just practiced the motions and wrote out the lyrics! I’m really excited for VBS tomorrow. HEHEHEHEHE.

Then we went to IU & Columbia’s apartment and just jammed and prayed together which was absolutely amazing! So many people coming together to praise as one body is truly amazing. I was really touched and blessed. Life is awesome, God is awesome.

Then we came back and taught everyone the motions and it was AWESOME!!!!

Then we just broke up and are currently getting ready to sleep as I blog.

So a couple of prayer request would be:

1) People are sick so pray for their quick healing so it won’t interfere with ministry!
2) Some people are having trouble going to the bathroom and it’s really unhealthy! So pray that they’ll have bowel movements so that they’ll be able to stay healthy! (I know this is sort of gross but it’s actually a problem!)
3) Pray that the people of Philadelphia will be open to our ministries and God’s works!
4) Pray that our team will be unified!
5) Pray for our first day!!! YAYAYAYAYAYAYAYYYYY!!

HEHEHEHEHEHEHEHE. okay. That’s really all I have to say. Hopefully maybe it’ll be me blogging again tomorrow! If not I hope you enjoy whoever else decides to blog! Good night and have an awesome MONDAY!!!!

Greetings from Philly!

Joanna here blogging for the team  

We have safely arrived in Philly after a long approximately 4 hour drive.

We left Cornell around 9:45am in 5 cars and had quite an interesting drive as we all drove in a 5-car caravan.

Haha, it was quite an adventure!

We did stop for an hour lunch break which was nice too 

Anyways, when we arrived, we met the Columbia team too!

After short introductions we were led to our apartment where we’ll be staying for the next week. Truthfully, the apartments were quite dirty and dusty but with the lead of Sandy & co. we cleaned down the entire girls’ apartment and we can walk around without shoes on! Hehe. We made a no shoes in the apartment rule! Asian style!

After the extensive cleaning we had some down time and played some fun games and got to relax. Lot of fun.

While we were cleaning, Pastor Vega came and met all of us and told us briefly of what would be happening at night. So we slowly started preparing dinner for our team, the Columbia team and the Indiana Team. While we were preparing the dinner, the Columbia team and the Indiana team came to our apartment and we were able to interact with everyone!

It was really great to see such a good number of people in one area who had devoted their week of break to serve God! There are definitely a lot of great and interesting people on all the teams. I even met a girl (i forgot her name  =X) who is in the ROTC at Indiana for the Air Force! Awesome!!!! Haha.

Everyone was really kind and really excited to be in Philly and work with each other which I think is totally AWESOME!!!! 

Unfortunately, due to the limited area of room, they had to go back to their apartments and ate in our individual areas. Spaghetti in meat sauce! YUMMMMMMM!!!

Then we kept ourselves entertained for quite a bit until Pastor Vega gave us a brief rundown of what would be happening for the rest of the week!

I think a lot of us are very open to what God has in store for us this week. We know that having humanly expectations will get us nowhere , but when we are open to what God’s great and amazing works, anything and everything is possible.

Everyone of us on this missions trip needs our hearts to be broken and pray that God will show his love for us and the people of Philadelphia.

Please please please please pray for us! Keep us in your prayers! And please pray for the people here and for Pastor Vega’s ministry!

Until we meet again!

Good night!

Hello everyone!

We’re leaving to Kensington, PA tomorrow at 9AM from Ithaca, NY!! We have 5 cars driving down and couple of our other members are coming in individually throughout the weekend. Please keep us in your prayers…

1. Pray that the team would submit to God’s will and obey.
2. Pray that the leaders would be humble before the Lord and the team and seek the Lord’s will and help, rather than relying on past experiences and our own strength.
3. Pray for God to grow the seeds that we hope to plant in the people we meet in Kensington.
4. Pray that we would be safe, spiritually and physically.
5. Pray that God would use this trip to convict some or all of the team members to commit their lives to full time urban ministry.
6. Pray that we would have team unity.

Our team members are…

Alex Lee
Aubrey Ralph
Charlene Chan
Johnson Cheng
Christen Park
Dave Chen
Dennis Kwon
Edgar Lei
Eric Yau
Esther Lee
Ife Samuel-Adedoyin
Isaac Lee
Janice Cheong
Joanna Lee
John Sullivan
Jorge Pereda
Joy Lee
Katie Lovett
Laurence Lin
Lin-lin Wang
Min Moon
Minji Kang
Nancy Blanks
Sandy Kim
Sharilyn Brandel
Sharon Kim
Sin Sub Jeong
Stuart Hanberg
Thomas Rho
Tiffany Jones
Walt Raudenbush

We will update you guys everyday on how we are doing in philly! Hope you all have safe and refreshing spring breaks wherever you are

-Philly Team ‘09