A Busy Few Weeks

Wow. It's been almost a month since I posted, and MORE then a month since I've done an actual update. I apologize. But look! A baby!

This is Tiny. Tiny forgives me for taking so long, and you should as well. 

In the past few weeks I have made some amazing friendships, and learned a lot of amazing things. But more importantly, I have taken a LOT of pictures. The main reason I didn't post two weeks ago is that my computer simply would not upload pictures. I only recently found out that it was running slow because of the huge volume of pictures (and some videos), so when I let it run for half an hour they all suddenly appeared on my computer!

Magic.

Anyway, what's happened in my life? We had a time from Madison, Wisconsin for a month. They were a part of the Bible School of the Nations (BSN), and we were part of their outreach. We also had the Fall DTS (8 girls, no guys) come back from their outreach in Thailand and India. They were here for a week, and I miss them. They rocked!

As with last time, I'm just going to post some (read: a lot of) pictures, and describe what's happening in them.

Here we go!

***

Up first, we have the time where the guy leaders were not available for having small group time, so we all played Twister instead. This experience is where the idea of making one giant twister pad covered in paint came from (those pictures come later) 

A good time was had by all, but Jason was kind of too big in my opinion. 

Next up I'll put all of the different food pantry pictures. They're not all from the same day, but we do it every week, so if I don't put them all together, there'll just be random similar photos mixed throughout.

At the food pantry, we generally serve about 200 people each week. The vast majority are elderly people from Chinatown, who just know how to say "Yes", "No", and "Thank you." It's kind of adorable. 

See? Adorable.

The cabbage box is too tall, and it got to where we couldn't reach over and grab it out, so...

...an alternate system had to be developed.

Food pantry is a lot of fun, but I miss it every other week with my ministry team, because every other Thursday we go out to North Beach and work at the Italian Community Center (and by "work' I mean "Play bingo with old Italian people). 

Sadly, I have no pictures of that. Just imagine me sitting in a room with a bunch of elderly ladies and one or two men, playing bingo and eating Italian pastries. It's really a blessing to them, because most of them are retired and living alone in North Beach, and playing bingo and doing other activities at the community center is one of the only times during the week they get to socialize with other people. 

I do, however, have some pictures of the Boys and Girls Club. That is easily my favorite part of the DTS so far, because the kids know me and my friends, and we get to feel included in their lives. I've only gotten to know a few of their names, because I suck at remembering names, but they all know my name by now (although a lot of the little girls call me "kitty", for reasons I can't quite remember).

There's one 4th grade girl named Ariana who I named "Cray-Cray" because she's absolutely crazy. We became "friends" when I consistently beat her at air hockey, which was always followed by her beating me...physically. She screams and slaps and kicks, but not in a throwing a tantrum way, but more in a, "You're funny, and when I hit you, you say funny things and run around and it's a lot of fun" kind of way.

I had to eventually teach her that kicking and hitting and screaming is not an acceptable way to express emotion, and she's stopped hitting me and started beating me at air hockey. Consistently. In a few weeks, she went from learner to master.

Worth it for a new friend? Almost.

Yu-Gi-Oh is apparently still a thing that kids do. These guys play it every day. The boy on the left has a calculator on his phone specifically for the calculating points in the game. 

Occasionally the puck gets hit so hard, this happens. We play air hockey hardcore up in the club.

The Boys and Girls Club is a Catholic organization that is funded almost entirely by donations made at a yearly fundraiser. As volunteers at the club, our team got to go for free. It was suuuuuuper classy. I was the only guy there without a suit jacket, but I made up for the with suspenders, which as far as I'm concerned are +50 classy points. 

I've got one classy roommate.

Jen and Markus, our North Beach leaders. 

Our beautiful North Beach ladies in descending order: Sarah, Tiffany, Jen, and Edith. 

Some Sisters from the cathedral. They were just there for the dancing, I'm sure of it. 

The most stupidly ornate desert of all time. Give me a smoothie or DQ Blizzard any day. 

The epitome of class.

We danced till midnight, and then some. It was a long night, and it was right before the time change. We technically didn't get home until almost 2 o'clock. 

Earlier I promised pictures of Twister with paint. Here they are. It was good, homemade fun, and a disaster waiting to happen.

Here it is, in it's unblemished glory. Two minutes later, it was unrecognizable. 

Begin!

If that looks like a hand print on Tess's face, that's because it is. There was a lot of face slapping and paint flinging in the name of competition and trolling. 

And those are only from the first game! I didn't play either (I like clean clothes), but even as the designated photographer I managed to get painted (Hillary and Ben slapped me in the face). For the second game I took pictures with Tiffany's phone (and I took about 200 selfies, because that's what you do when a friend gives you their phone), but yeah, it was a mess. An awesome mess. 

I think I strung these photos together pretty well, but I have lots more. These ones won't be as themed, but I'll give each one a proper description. 

One weekend we had a team of 75 people stay and do ministry. It was hectic. Most of us DTS students just hid from them, because who wants to deal with that?!

"Escape From New York Pizza". Yes, it IS named after the 1981 John Carpenter action movie. On the wall, they have autographs from famous people who stop by, and they have a real big one from John Carpenter himself. 

There's a soda shop across from Escape From New York that just sells soda. Hundreds and hundreds of different brands of soda. 

Twitter HQ. If this city were to get nuked, how would anyone know about it without Twitter??

Tiny's "big" sister, Eloise, or "Wheezy". She's probably the cutest single organism in the known universe.  

Wheezy compared to Steve

She went up to help with worship during the Fall DTS graduation. 

The Fall DTS graduation was a night of fellowship, worship, Thai food, and crying. If you girls are reading this, you're all awesome, and you should totally come back for our graduation!! Just throwing that out there...

Snuck a picture during class time. I'm so bad!!

Ben does nails like an expert. 

Playing chess via Skype with my BFF Mark. He's in England. 

Wheezy hanging out with us big kids before class.

My laundromat has a giant pterodactyl. Not sure why, but there it is. 

I found a random movie set while walking the city after church last week. 

Ben just turned 21. His parents surprised him by flying up from Australia for a few days. His mom ironed my nice clothes before the fundraiser. Without her I'd have looked awful. I am forever in her debt. But yeah, we had a little party and it was good fun.

Taken from the roof of a parking garage connected to the police station in North Beach. It's our new favorite spot to go and pray, because we can see the whole neighborhood and then some. 

A good friend of mine sent me a care package of Hershey's chocolate bars, just like I asked for. I've also recieved a box full of Cheez-its, just like I asked for. Thank you all! 

Alright, that's it for pictures. Partially because there's not a lot left to show, but mostly because my fingers are tired and I want to post this today. 

I leave for Rome in three weeks. To everyone who has sent me money, thank you so much, and I have actual thank you cards in the works. Sort of. Hopefully I'll be able to send all of them before I leave. I believe I have almost enough money for the plane ticket now, so God willing it'll all be there when it needs to be.

I have seen God moving in the realm of finances while I'm here. My fellow DTS student Michaela came here without hardly any money whatesoever, because she came straight from college. One night she admitted her financial worries during a time of worship, and we stopped and all prayed for her. The next morning, she had 2000 dollars from various people, and within 48 hours of that prayer session, someone had anonymously donated 3000 dollars to her fundraising website (on TOP of the 2000 from the previous day!!!!). Her entire DTS was payed off.

You would be a fool to call that coincidence.

If I've learned anything while I've been here, it's that the phrase, "The Lord moves in mysterious ways" is not just a cliche. It is a fundamental fact of life. There are staff members here that live comfortably on less then 5000 dollars a year because of God's provision in their lives. Not a single member of YWAM has a job. Everything comes from support.

So thank you for your gifts. You really are an instrument of God. 

God's Blessings,
Chris