Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Serve the City...

Serve the City is showing kindness in practical ways to people in need. For the week of Serve the City there were 30 different projects to sign up with. Some of the projects included working with elderly, children, refugees, women, or doing practical work (painting, etc) at different places. The 6 of us signed up for Kamikaze Kindness, the project that sent us wandering the streets of Brussels looking for ways to spread love and hope through the city.

We did a wide variety of things throughout the city! The first serving day the dance team from South Africa traveled with us. They would do their dance to draw a crowd. Here is a video of them at the Skate Park we went to clean up and talk to kids.



We gave out free hugs to anyone and everyone! We walked around the city holding signs saying "Calins Grantuit" (which means free hugs) and would walk up to people and give them hugs.

One of the kids at the Skate Park grabbed the "Free Hugs" sign from Trevin and started going around to girls to get hugs from them. Trevin took the sign back but told the kid that he could make his own sign. Our paths crossed with those kids 3 times that day, and they had made their own Free Hugs sign and were giving free hugs to strangers just as we were!!
Twice we went to the train station for part of the day and waited for trains arriving from Paris and London and welcomed them to Brussels! It was a lot of fun yelling "Welcome to Brussels!" as they walked through to door and give people hugs. It brought many smiles to people's faces. I had one woman say to me "You don't know how much I need this hug right now." That made it so worth it!

While I was waiting for the rest of our group I was able to help a mom who was trying to control her kids while waiting for someone. Her kids weren't listening to her and running around everywhere, so I pulled out some bubbles that I had in my bag and started blowing them. The kids immediately turned and started playing with them. The mom looked and my and said "Merci! Merci! Merci!!" Its fun the little things that we can do that mean so much to people!

Cleaning was a big part of our serving. We carried trash bags and brooms with us wherever we went and cleaned anywhere we saw needed it. Chad was excellent with his cleaning skills! Friday, the last serving day, someone stumbled across an alleyway behind an apartment building that was FILLED with trash. It looked like a landfill. We spent the entire day on Friday cleaning up the alleyway and someone called the city to have them come and haul away what we put together. As we were leaving Carlton shared that they want to try to plant a garden where all the trash used to be.

Here's a video of the alley with Trevin's narration...



Cleaning up the alleyway...
John and Chad bagging trash
 
Trevin and I sweeping away! 

Andrea! 

Robyn cleaning up trash
What a great week...and this is just a taste of the things we did! 

Thursday, July 16, 2009

The days in preparing to Serve the City...

I've been home for a week and a day...and I'm still processing a lot. As the lessons that I learned are still churning inside my brain I will share what we did while we were there, starting with the few days before Serve the City actually started...

Friday was a adjustment day. We flew all night Thursday night and arrived Friday morning. We were given a mini tour of the city by one of the interns. It was basically his job to keep us awake for the day since we were all dragging from the travel! I was up for over 36 hours straight since I don't sleep on planes!

Saturday all the volunteers gather at the EPEE Center, which was our homebase for the week. Carlton, the leader of Serve the City, and team lead for the Christian Associates team in Brussels, shared with us about Crossing the Line and Serving the City. Within Brussels there is a distinct line. There used to be a wall around the city, where on one side the poor lived, and the other is where the rich lived. The wall is no longer there, but now there is a vertical divide where it used to be. There is a lift (an actual elevator) that divides the city. At the top of the lift is Palace de Justise, the Courthouse, and where the rich live. At the bottom is where the poor reside. The EPEE Center is just below the lift. Pictured on the right is standing above the lift looking down to where The EPEE Center is. The lift is in the left of the picture.

We split into different sessions to learn more about the culture within Brussels. I went to Understanding Islam first, which was interesting, but I felt like we got the smallest taste and I have so much more to learn! The second session I went to was Stop the Traffik. This session showed my ignorance and how naive I am within the world of human trafficking. Phil shared an audio interview of a woman who was dating a guy and after several months they traveled to France together, and then he made her go to Italy with him. Once they went to Italy the boyfriend began selling her. Her parents would call but he was always with her, so she had to lie about how things were. She ended up getting really sick and was in the hospital for a week. During her time in the hospital she was able to call her parents and tell them the truth. Her parents came and freed her from the guy. Sadly, she can't bring it upon herself to change her number so the guy keeps calling her and telling her that it was all a misunderstanding and is trying to get her to come back. He has been calling her for 2 years now.
Sex slaves aren't the only way people are trafficked. Stop the Traffik has targeted the chocolate industry. They played this video for us...




The end scene breaks my heart where you see a little African child having his first taste of chocolate. He has been working long hard hours harvesting the cocoa beans not knowing the goodness that they create!!
Stop the Traffik has gone after a European chocolate company who after 2 years of them getting in their faces about child slavery has said that they will use fair trade cocoa beans for the biggest selling bar. Stop the Traffik then targeted Mars Chocolate and after only 2 weeks they said that they will only use fair trade chocolate for their biggest bar now, and by 2020 use only fair trade. Nestle is their next target.

I had no clue about human trafficking, especially in the chocolate industry....again there is so much more that I need to learn! If you want to learn more check out stopthetraffik.org.

On Sunday we went to different churches. Robyn, Andrea, and I went to Vineyard church. It was a small english speaking church outside the city. It was a nice service, and everyone there was especially nice and welcoming towards us. After the service we went to lunch with one of the worship leaders, Stephen. His wife was away visiting one of their four daughters in England so she wasn't able to come with us. We went to Pizza Hut! It was the nicest Pizza Hut I had ever been to! After lunch he took us to their house which was really neat! Then we walked around a market that was going on down the street from where he lived. It was a HUGE market! Here is a picture of the 4 of us. Get used to the blue shirts because we wore them every day!

After we headed back to the city we went to All Well Worship. The Well is the church plant that Christian Associates has started. They have 4 (maybe 5) different expressions. Some meet in the morning, some at night, some target families, some single people, etc. This night all the expressions came together. Carlton was telling me that they have a hard time getting most of the people to come to all Well Worship. It was a neat service. We met in a huge, gorgeous, old church. There were stations set up around the room, each one representing a different Beatitude. Once the stations were over there was a time of worship, Carlton spoke on their continued series about Desire, and more worship. We headed down to EPEE for dinner together and called it a night!

It was crazy everything we packed into the weekend...and this was all before Serve the City actually started!!!

Friday, July 10, 2009

I'm Home...but I don't think my heart is...

I got home Wednesday night. Our plane landed at 7:30 pm. It feels very strange to be home again. Our time in Brussels was amazing. I was so impressed with the kids on our team. Our comfort zones were stretched, we served with all our hearts, made new friends. Truly an amazing trip! I'm still processing a lot...as I have tons of stories to share and as I process things I will post them. For now here is the video of the week that one of the interns put together, and the song "Names" written by one of the high school students who lives in Brussels and his parents are missionaries there.