Boston Rescue Mission

Jacob and Ken preaching

Hard to believe, but this weekend marked the very last outreach of the trimester! It doesn't seem that long ago that I was going on my first outreach to Wakefield. And hey, if I'm going to start in Massachusetts, why not end there? This last outreach, though, took us to Boston.

Anton Luse (New Jersey) was the leader for our outreach event from Friday to Saturday. We were at the Boston Rescue Mission, a living center for recovering narcs/alcoholics. All people living in the building had to have gone through a detox program before entering, and while living in the building they have to regularly check in with a non-resident case worker in order to determine their outside privileges. One of the building's main caretakers (Dennis) had lived on the street himself for 10 years before he checked in to the Boston Rescue Mission. He lived in the house and cleaned up after 2 years, and has since been working for the Mission. Although he has a rough personality, he has a good understanding of the Lord and His ways, and we could see His love in Dennis.

We attended the Friday night church service that they have weekly in their 'chapel', which is the 2nd floor with a piano in the corner, and sound equipment in a closet where CDs are played for worship time. Anton was the main one preaching, while Ken Nelson (our leader), Sharayah Quinn (Huntington, NY) and Jacob Garrett (San Diego, CA) had short sermons to preach as well. One of the residents (Katie) give a testimony of what the Lord had been showing her, which was that not one person can ever satisfy everything for you and only the Lord can.

Afterwards Dennis showed us the different floors that the men and women stay on (only the girls could go onto the women's floors, and only the guys could go onto the guy's floors), and then brought out two huge pails of ice cream for us. It was almost midnight by the time we were done eating and talking to him about dreams, and he had to be up at 4 AM to start cooking! The rest of us had to get up by 5:30 at the latest, so we quickly headed for our respective rooms. We were staying in locked, isolated areas of the building for the night.

On Saturday morning me, my brother Luke, Nathan Fox-Helser (North Carolina) and Dustin Zupancic (Abbotsford, BC) listened to a black guy named George tell us about his adventures/trials growing up and his time on the street. Luke told me that he had seen me praying for this guy in a picture he got from the Lord, so once he had finished speaking we asked if we could pray for him. I started out, and then the others joined in. He had a broken arm so we all got to pray for it, and we believe that Lord is healing his arm.

The rest of the morning involved us doing various forms of manual labor, everything from cleaning the kitchen area to carrying boxes of food to moving pallets of stuff to making sandwiches. The sandwiches were being made for the Mission's program they do every Saturday, which is to go out to the Boston Common and feed the homeless there with sandwiches. Each sandwich is wrapped in an hand-made 'tract' napkin, which in this case is just different encouraging scriptures or uplifting words people wrote on the napkins.

By the time 1 PM hit we were all very tired. We were originally going to help with feeding the homeless in the Boston Common, but instead we got lunch and then headed on home. The car ride was the most quiet it has ever been!

That was it...outreaches are finished. We also had graduation on Sunday (pictures to come), where Scott Evelyn and John Paul Jackson himself were present to either speak to us or pray over us. Pretty cool stuff. We leave on Saturday for my most anticipated part of this trimester: Mexico!

Tornado Watch?

Yep, you read right. There was a tornado watch on Sunday, but I'll get to that later.

Our fearless leader David Carpentier (Rowley, MA) had a different sort of outreach for us this past weekend. We were to go on Friday to the quarterly prophetic meeting at Northshore Bridge Church in Beverly, Massachusetts, and teach the members of their prophetic team how to do prophetic ministry and dream interpretation on the streets. They had only ever done ministry in the Northshore Bridge, so our job was to teach the 'street lingo' that we use and different approaches to avoid being too religious. One way of doing that was having all of them get ministry from us (the interns) one by one, and we ministered to them using 'street lingo' instead of 'Christianese' (our word for religious lingo). The prophetic team was amazed at how well it worked and how completely nonreligious it was.

As a useless random trivia bit, there is a woman on the prophetic team at Northshore Bridge who was the voice of one of the screams in the Jaws movie trailer...how's THAT for nonreligious?

After the meeting we went to the McDonald's across the street, where we encountered an employee who is Christian and just starting to find out about prophetic ministry. I felt like we were supposed to minister to him, but I had a hard time getting anyone else to join me. He came out after his shift was done, so I took the chance to sit in front of him at a table and start talking to him. Jody Demske (Michigan) came over with a note of words for him that she had written. He expressed how much it impacted him, and that he'll never forget it. That's the kind of ministry I love, when it's random and not defined by a particular time.

Pretty funky artwork @ the Gathering

Saturday we all headed to one of our favorite places in the world to do street ministry: Salem! This time the outreach was only going to last for 3 hours, and the streets weren't exactly full of people. After an hour we did start getting a steadier flow of people come in, and at that point I was able to start teaching my team. The picture I saw for the first woman sitting in front of us was a picture of a tent with only a set of bright eyes visible in it, and then bright stars circling the tent. I told her that there was a mystical quality about her, that people are naturally drawn to her and see something she has that they want. My two teammates added their input, and then she revealed that she is a field nurse, and that often in the ambulance rides people reach for her and cling to her hand. She said that she was a Christian, but then a little further on mentioned that she uses tarot cards 'for fun' to give people hope. After we prayed for her and she went off, I used that opportunity to teach my two 'apprentices' about how to handle that sort of situation, which involved us praying after she was gone that the Lord would show her using tarot cards was wrong.

In the Gathering Church (see previous blog entries about Salem if you don't know about the Gathering) I noticed a lot of artwork from local artists. Pastor Phil Wyman mentioned that he is making the Gathering more than just a typical church, which includes welcoming local artists to 'do their thing' in the Gathering. There was this one clay sculpture in particular of a shoe in a handbag that looked so real, I couldn't even tell it was clay from far away the first time I saw it! I learn something new about Salem every time I go, it seems. One thing always remains the same, though; Lunch at Cafe Kushco! (some of the best food in the world)

There's another John Harding? Egads!

After the outreach we went to a little port town called Newburyport in Massachusetts, where our John Harding, who just so happens to be a local, took us on a mini-tour of the harbor area, and then took me to see a few of the shops. We got hungry rather fast, so the two of us went to eat Indian cuisine. As we ordered our food, we got a phone call from David saying that Newburyport had issued a regional tornado warning! The lights started to go on and off, and all the sudden the rains just hit Newburyport out of nowhere. David said that the two of us needed to get to the van, but the van was several blocks way. The rain was pouring down so hard that there were puddles and "mini-rivers" as deep as half a foot! John Harding had an idea, though - we asked for garbage bags, and the greeter laughed as she got them for us. They were bright white! We covered our heads with the bags, and on the count of three, rushed out into the monsoon rains, splashing through puddles and giggling like schoolgirls. We stopped under the awning of a cafe, and the looks we got from the people inside were priceless! As we ran onward, I decided to be a little crazy and just took the bag off my head. I got absolutely pummeled with rain and soaked, but it felt awesome as I jumped into the van with a goofy grin on my face. As we headed back to the Carpentier's house for the night, heavy hail started to fall...what a mess!

Sunday we went to the Northshore Bridge to promote the Streams Academy internship program and then prophetically minister to the people of the church one-by-one. I always have a hard time with it, as I only feel called to speak to specific people. I decided I would go to people that I felt were being 'highlighted' to me, and that seemed to work better. I didn't always feel the Lord when I was speaking, but the response from each person was always good. My confidence is ever rising...

After church Drew McGee (associate pastor of the bridge) had something called 'Take an Intern to Lunch' where different people from the church took us to their homes for lunch and to talk a bit about what was happening with us at the internship. Our hosts were Spanish speakers, which delighted me! It was great to get some practice in.

This upcoming weekend I have off - after that, there's one more outreach, graduation and then the trip to Mexico. Things are wrapping up fast!