Our school just got back from a week in Chicago, Illinois! Our focus for lecture this week was Urban culture and how to share Jesus with people in cities, so we packed up into three, 15-passenger vans and drove 16 hours to Chicago. It was such a cool experience!
I've been to Chicago before, but I had no idea there was such cultural diversity clustered throughout the city! There are literally complete cultural centers every few blocks... you can be walking along in a Pakistani district (they all speak the language, dress the same, have their cultural shops and restaurants), and cross the street into an Israeli district. The street names change and everything!
Needless to say, we got to eat a lot of really good ethnic food, and talk with some really neat people.
One day we went downtown and were just asking the people walking by if we could pray for them. We were rejected numerous times, but we were able to pray for over 300 people in just one hour! Imagine how many people were encouraged that day! :) I was able to pray for healing in a woman's back, recovery from a cancer operation for someone's sister, healing for a man's wife from crohn's disease, several court case rulings, the security guards of the plaza we were walking around in, and many other awesome people.
We also visited a nursing home in the city and met some precious little old people who were really lonely. Most of them were from India and had moved here to be closer to their children, but their children didn't visit them anymore. It was so hard to leave them! :( But we got to sing to them, pray for them, and hear about their lives. One little old lady told me to call her Nani (the word for Grandmother in her language) and asked me to sit and watch her soap operas with her :) they were all in another language, so she explained them to me. It was precious!
Our last day in the city, we visited the a "temple"? of krishna consciousness and a muslim mosque... The point of this time was to examine both religions and try to see what attracted people to them, and what they were clearly missing that Christianity addressed. It was a very eye-opening time for me, and really made me fall more in love with God, because of his love and his greatness... no other god compares! :)
Some awesome quotes from this week's teaching with Brad Stanley:
- " The enemy doesn't waste his time with things that aren't a threat to him...Where is he working overtime to steal, kill, and destroy, and what treasure is buried there that he's working against?"
- "It's more important to understand the redemptive gift of a place than the spiritual strongholds... We shouldn't be out chasing the devil and fixing things after he's made a mess. We should be taking hold of God's purposes and helping cities to realize their giftings as a city."
All in all, this was a really neat week! We were engaging in hands-on, applicable-to-the-moment learning, and going out to bless a beautiful city. I would love to do ministry in Chicago again sometime, and I might actually get the chance to lead the summer camp outreach there this summer for my outreach as an SST Staff person. :)
As always, thank you for being interested in my life! Love you :)
My mohawk! :) Taken by Jake M.
Chicago at night! Taken by Meganne S.
The Krisna Conscious place taken by Meganne S.
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