PHILADELPHIA MISSIONS TRIP 2010
Spring Break this year was a little different then it ever has been. I went with 40 other college students to Urban Hope in Philadelphia. This is an inner city mission where they focus on children coming to the Lord and through them hope that their families will hear the word. After the 22 hour bus ride we arrived in what many would call 'the ghetto' and we helped with with a children's program called Kingdom Kids, where we went around the neighborhood and picked up children on a list the church had. To get an idea of how many people that lived around the neighborhood they call a block from stop light to stop light with 8-10 people living in a home that has another home side to side with them. If you do the calculations there are around 400 people living on a block! Also the people in this neighborhood do not make as much money as you would think, the average income is $20,000 a year and that is per household and to support 8-10 people.
Through out the rest of the week we cleaned up the streets around Urban Hope, picked up many little drug bags and even found some, did projects for Urban Hope to improve
their facilities. We also did some things with the homeless people, we gave them sack dinners one night in the subway station and just had some conversations, then we went to Breaking Bread which is a service in a church downtown for them to get a meal 3 different times a week, get help with banking and law, get different clothes, visit the salon, and there is even a hangout place in the winter where they can come and have coffee, watch tv and hang out with each other.
One of my favorite things we did were to go to the Boys and Girls club two different days. We worked with the same kids both days and they were excited to see us again.
While there we helped them with their homework and played games with them. These kids were so sweet and just wanted someone to care that they were trying with their homework. Most of them do not get individual attention but have dreams to be something big and get out of their living situation.
We also did some team bonding since many of us just knew a few other people on the trip. Many nights we would play crazy uno, share glory day stories, and we even had a dance party in the church the last night we were there.
On the very last day we were there we did some sight seeing and saw many of the historic sights. Among those were the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall where they signed the Declaration of Independence, Quaker House, Benjamin Franklin's grave, Betsy Ross's house (whose real name was Elizabeth Clayborne). Some of the fun things we did
were to eat an authentic philly cheesesteak sandwich, grab a special shake at H
ard Rock Cafe, and finding the train station instead of the art museum so that made us flag down a cab in order to get the art museum just in time to run up the stairs that Rocky ran up in his movies with the rest of our group. It was quite the adventure that day full of laughs and good conversation with some new friends.
Our whole group before departing Urban Hope!
