Outreach Week 1 – UGM – JDTS 09
NOTE: The JDTS is now in Thailand on outreach, so updates will be less frequent as they have access.
After a brief nine day holiday that saw most of us going home, our first week back in Winnipeg was spent working at the Union Gospel Mission. UGM is a non-denominational urban mission in the North End of town that provides food for the homeless, as well as facilitates a drug and alcohol rehabilitation program that houses and counsels men and women that are determined to move towards recovery and healing. The mission also has a chapel in the building where the visitors wanting a meal sit in on the chapel service before lunch is served. Union Gospel was eager to put the six of us students to work for the week, and it was certainly a welcoming and hospitable environment to work in.
Breakfast was at seven every day, and by ten to eight we would all be bundled and on our way out the door. The temperatures through out the week hovered in the minus twenties, and so the walk to and wait for the bus was consistently awakening for the group. Ashley was on breakfast prep and so us addicts were very thankful for the steady flow of coffee that she ensured was present. Getting back into the swing of early rises on top of the eight hour work days at UGM caused some serious fatigue within the students, and so the house seemed to quite down earlier than usual throughout the week. During the days we would often be separated into a couple groups so they could use us more efficiently. Everybody had a chance to work in the kitchen at some point, and that seemed to be the highlight for most of us. The kitchen staff and volunteers do an amazing work preparing meals for upwards of a hundred people multiple times a week using food thats mostly been given by grocers that can’t sell it. Using food that would be destined for a landfill, the great team there prepares meals that are of an incredibly high quality. Most of the world can’t eat as well as the homeless can at UGM, all being done as a practical act of redemption, outwardly expressed as a reflection of the character of our Father. One mans trash is another mans dinner. Between cutting vegetables, plating tables, and turning potatoes into delicious french fries, we all felt a sense of love and care from the staff and residents who work in the kitchen.
We ate lunch daily with the rehabilitation program residents and UGM staff after the open meal was served to people from the street. These lunch times were a highlight for myself from the week, and I think all of us were challenged and intrigued by conversations with men from the program. Hearing stories from lives of very hard knocks integrated with an active awareness of their need for God’s help gave us a very encouraging experience in our time with them. Apart from the kitchen, we also did some cleaning work in the dining room, organizing books and sheets in the sorting room, and preparing bags of donated clothes to be shipped globally as well as locally. Thursday night we had a New Years eve party at the house that was filled with some yummy junk food, loud music, and some spontaneous dancing of course. We played a game that required picking up pieces of cardboard with your teeth, trimming the sides of the cardboard after every round bringing it lower and lower to the ground. The conclusion was that Kathryn is part rubber, or that at some point she trained to be a gymnast, because she was bending in ways that demanded head tilts from the onlookers. Upon juicing every last drop of excitement from 2009, we headed to bed for a short lived rest. Friday morning, New Years day, we traveled to the bus stop, business as usual. It must have been -30, and after 20 minutes of waiting for a bus that was usually right on time, we decided to look at the bus stop to see what time it came at. The sign read “Holidays: No Service”, and so after a quick re routing at the house we found an operating bus route and headed to UGM for our last day of volunteering.
The urban outreaches in Winnipeg ensure that they spread out their Christmas meals to cover a vaster time period, and allow people from the streets to be at multiple celebrations. New years day was the special day at Union, and because of the additional festivities, they brought in an extra 20 or so volunteers to aide with the extra duties. Preparing a full on turkey lunch and cutting pie for 400 people is no simple task, but UGM has been at this now for over 50 years, and so they delegated the willing bodies with an impressive tact. Some of us worked in the drop in coffee area greeting and conversing with people coming for a meal, and some people worked in the dining room helping manage the chaos of feeding hundreds of folks. A handful of volunteers and myself worked in the chapel for the day, taking prayer requests from those expressing interest after the chaplain offered prayer. A very interesting dynamic was in the air of those chapel services. Many people simply wanted the hot meal, and were anything but interested in the 45 minute sermon that preceded. Pockets of people retorting bitterly to the preachers claims, while others seeming fully given to the truth of the message shouting hallelujahs with desperate sincerity. A great deal more lied somewhere in the middle, keeping silence while waiting patiently. I have never been to more intriguing services, and the conversations and prayers that I shared with people throughout the three services ministered to my spirit in many ways. Everybody in the DTS had feelings and thoughts about the way that UGM organized their service, and whether positive or negative, I think we would all say we lift our hats to the lovely brothers and sisters who turn the wheels of compassion that touch so many lives through Union Gospel.
Sunday was the last little flowers meeting before outreach, and this week is outreach preparation week. Thailand is finding a sharper shape on the horizon, and as we ponder the unimaginable that will surely meet us on outreach, excitement levels are on the rise. A cocktail of feelings including anxiety, fear, and excitement are being churned daily in all of us, and our hope is to be increasingly open and honest with our feelings about outreach, so that we can support each other and unite together in our trust of God and one another. While we are on outreach, Jamie and Kim will be remaining at the house, and will be able to update the blog and inform you of how and what were all doing. This will include a post when we arrive safely in Thailand, so that all of you worried family members wont have to wait for your jet lagged loved ones to find a telephone. We are starting to learn of plans for while we are in Chiang Mai which include a week of work with a forestation preservation group, as well as some other equally exciting opportunities. Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers, and continue to check the site for blog posts while we are in Thailand and Vancover. We will be back in Winnipeg on February 19th, God bless.
July 1st, 2010 at 5:16 am
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