last sunday
Today I'm not at church for various reasons. It is actually nice to have a morning by myself in an empty house, I need time like this to reflect and think. I was thinking about last Sunday and decided to copy out my journal entry from last Sunday night into here, because the story of Sunday is a good one. Some background info: Highland Park is the poorest, most dangerous area of Detroit. Holk is an independent minister who has his own church called "Word of Power", one congregation of which meets in our building. The one time I met Holk, he reminded me of a used car salesman, very sleazy. So here is the story...



July 11, 2004

Snapshot: Highland Park area, strip mall, very few stores, right in the middle of the mall is a neon sign: "Army Recruitment Center"

We went to church at Highland park, a good speaker again. We eat lunch, change clothes, and head over to the church. We're waiting in the lobby for Dave, Le-Le and Dalila when Pastor James - Holk's minister - comes out of the sanctuary and invites Jacob and I in. We say we're just waiting for our kids, but, not wanting to be rude, we go in. There are three kids who are no older than 10, one teenager, and one older fellow who we find out later is 83 and a deacon. The kids and James finish up a song they're singing, and James says "We have a minister in our midst today, and she don't know it, but she's gonna bring us the word today. So come on up here!" I don't remember protesting at all, I felt like I was being challenged, like I, John's church, and the Community of Christ were being put to the test, so I stepped up. I asked if they were looking at a particular scripture, he said no, so I went with the lectionary that day - the story of the Good Samaritan. I'd heard it preached earlier that day and John had done the story for our "Gettin' Real with Jesus" time with our kids earlier in the week, so it was fresh in my mind. I told the story instead of reading it, being sure to bring in the lawyer's question to Jesus: "Who is my neighbour?" I made the story repetitive and built up the tension - the advantage of telling and not reading. I engaged all six of the people in the congregation, I couldn't tell what James thought since he was behind me. I talked about everyone being our neighbour, and Jesus calling on us to go and do the same. I talked about how Jesus calls us to love our enemies, not just the easy people to love. And I talked about how we are called to act on our love; not just talk about loving people, but actually do things to show our love. Mr. Deacon even gave me some "Amen!"s and I distinctly remember applause when I was done, which felt weird.

Now that was a step out in faith.

James commended me for "really gettin' to the point" of the scripture. I'm just grateful God gave me the words to say, because it definitely wasn't all me up there. James kept complimenting me after the service on my ability to keep the kids engaged. (there were only three of them, it wasn't that hard) When he spoke after me in the service, he didn't even engage me, forget the fidgety kids he kept getting mad at. Afterward he wouldn't take the kids to see Spiderman 2 because one of them had misbehaved. I was not impressed with him at all. I did love talking to the 83 year old deacon though, he was great, really sweet, very funny, humble with a huge, genuine smile that lit up his face - a totally different vibe than from James. I guess this today was partially God saying "Shannon, when you pull out the seminary card," (which I did in a conversation with James on Monday) "I'm going to hold you accountable for it." Serves me right for opening my big arrogant mouth to proudly say that I'm a seminary student.


Back to July 18th

That was definitely a Sunday I will remember for a long time. I want to say thank you to all of you who are reading this who sent me notes from BC reunion, I got them in the mail yesterday and they made my day, I really appreciate your thoughtfulness. I missed you too very much and missed being at reunion. I'm really looking forward to spending a week a Samish for Kimtah when I get back.

catching up
I've been very lazy about updating this past week. With only three of us working at the church is has been very tiring. Jacob, John Corn and I had a great week though. Other than a fight on Monday that resulted in everyone being sent home, the kids were great. We really feel like they've learned to trust us and we've learned to trust them. I was lucky enough to be the one who cooked lunch every day, well, maybe not so lucky. It's always hit or misss for how many kids will show up for lunch. We always seem to have enough food to go around though, and these kids aren't too picky.


All week during craft time we split the kids into two groups and had half do a craft and the other half work on our camp newspaper in the computer lab. The kids did some awesome work, and hopefully, the next time I post to this blog, I will also post a link to an online version of the paper, so you can read it. The kids did some great work and I am very proud of them.


This week the mural has been finished. It grew in the past 2 weeks.

Here is Jacob finishing up, with Teara directing of course:

Here is a preliminary picture of the finished mural, better pictures will come soon:

The other exciting thing this week was that we took them all on a field trip yesterday to Flint to a children's farm and a water park on a lake. They had a great time.

All of the kids got to feed the animals, which was fun for them. It is interesting to think that kids who live in a dangerous neighbourhood like ours by the church, could be scared of some goats and donkeys.

There was a brand new baby donkey at the farm:

One of our girls decided it would be a good idea to braid the hair of one of the donkeys so it would have a "real pimpin' doo"

Here is the whole group. The tour guide didn't do a fabulous job of taking the picture, but it's not too bad. We certainly were not expecting 24 kids to show up for the trip (we take anyone who shows up with a permission form), but we managed just fine and they were very well behaved.

Here is a bunch of our kids posing on a tractor.

We ran out of bread for sandwiches at lunch, but the kids didn't seem to mind. Everyone had something to eat, even if it was cheese wrapped up in a few slices of ham. Thank goodness we had bought exactly 24 bottles of water.

My camera batteries died when we got to the water park and beach, so I didn't get any pictures there. That was great though, all of the kids ended up playing in the water and in the sand at the lake, the water park wasn't as exciting as the lake I guess. I had fun watching them. The concession stand had exactly 24 jumbo freezies in the freezer, so we bought them out and gave them to our kids.
It was a really great day and I am so glad we went. A lot of the kids slept the whole way home, they were so tired, and we slept well that night too.

exciting week
This week has been exciting. We have three new people helping us out who have been a great source of new energy. We have a planned-out afternoon camp that is going very well so far. Lots of progress has been made on the mural, and it looks like they will be doing a mural inside the church as well because we have lots more time for painting.

Here is Dave painting:

Here are Trina and Jacob painting:

And a picture of me! Finally! You can see that I am being good and reading my Bible.

Here are some pictures from crafts class:

Here are some of the guys showing off their fancy beadwork that they were very proud of:

4th of july fun
Today we went to Highland Park, the most dangerous and run-down neighbourhood in Detroit (our neighbourhood isn't the only bad one), for church. The neighbourhood is so run down that there are places where there are no street signs. The service was great. The congregation's building there is also the Community of Christ African American Ministries Centre. I heard the best sermon so far in my time here this summer, I felt like it was speaking to me personally where I'm at. It was both challenging and inspirational. It was a good place for our first communion service (since this is the first first Sunday of the month we've been here for) of our time in Detroit. Yesterday also marked the end of week 4, which means we are halfway through our time here, which is kind of sad.
We had a little 4th of July party at the church in the afternoon. We bought lots of hot dogs and sausages and served them up to our kids and to a few adults passing through. I took some great pictures of the cookout, but the memory card they were on is corrupt, so I don't have them, which is sad. I do have a few pictures from another camera though. After eating, John and the two girls that went to camp led everyone in a few campfire songs:

We also had some flav-o-ice freezies that we gave out for dessert. An older fellow from the Restoration Towers senior's home next door to the church came by, and for some reason I love this picture of him eating his freezie:

After we ate, since it was Pastor John's first time back since we started our little Heart and Soul band, we had to play for him, and fun times were had:

Our little Dancing Queen, Brittany:

To cap off a great 4th of July, Jacob and I took John to see Fahrenheit 9/11, which we didn't mind seeing for a second time. We thought it was a very patriotic thing to do. I had a revelation afterwards when we were talking about Michael Moore. John said something about the fact that it's silly that people say Michael Moore isn't patriotic, it's obvious he loves his country. I said that criticizing your country shows you care enough about it, you love your country enough, that you want it to be the best it possibly can be.


A Belated Happy Canada Day and a Happy 4th of July. Go find a way to make your country even better.

Posted by shanneranner at 12:01 AM PDT

Updated: Sunday, 18 July 2004 9:28 AM PDT

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thursday report
Thursday was great, we had a good time painting and playing dodgeball with the brand new ball we bought. We played by the rules from the movie, which meant a longer game because in the movie, if you catch the ball, not only is the person who threw the ball out, but the team that caught the ball gets to bring one player back in who was out. We had lots of fun with that. Here are some pictures from our adventures on Thursday:

Then the ball popped, which was not fun. But, there are funny pictures:

After dodgeball we made some music again. The kids are so funny. This one kid, Dave, is very particular about everyone starting together on his beat, it's great. Here are some pictures:

The mural is coming along well, Jacob's doing a great job, and the kids are having fun helping out with it. It was so hot on Thursday, however, that we couldn't work for too long. Here is the in-progress mural:

Then, on Friday we went up to Bluewater campground to hang out with some friends and to pick up our kids who were there all week. The grounds are nice, with a beautiful view of Lake Huron. Last night we watched the moon rise, it was spectacular. I took a couple of pictures at the lake during the day:

The kids made masks at camp. John made one too and someone painted it to look like his actual face. It is very creepy. From the picture, it's hard to tell that it's a mask.

I think that is all for now, that's all the pictures I have. I'm getting better at remembering to bring a camera along with me.