Urban Entry

Blog world wazzup! Today I come to you with a special post! This week was not my normal lecture week. This week Link Year headed to Kansas City, Mo and Ks to help serve The Hope Center. The Hope Center is a Christian based community development center in inner city KC, Mo. We started our journey on Monday afternoon and arrived in Kc, Ks at a friend of the Donyes house, which was a rather nice house. There we ate dinner and a game begun. Each family group was given 14 tickets, representing money,and several options on what we could spend the tickets on. We were also told that there was an incentive to having the most tickets at the end of the week. What we could spend the tickets on we're Tuesday lunch, showers, if you did not already pay for them, or phone time. For my group it was easy. We spent the tickets on Tuesday lunch. After this was explained, Adam threw us another curveball and said that the guys had 27 dollars to buy breakfast at a local grocery store for the three days. So, us guys put our heads together and had the brilliant idea of buying what you most need in the morning, carbohydrates and protein. Naturally we bought bread and peanut butter and coffee, a great decision. So Tuesday morning we hop in the Kanakuk vans and head over to what we would find out to be the Hope Center. When we arrived we were met by the founder and one of his loyal employees and have us the low down on the hope center. After this we hopped on a van and had a tour of the neighborhood to see what problems the neighborhood had and how the founder felt God was calling him to help fix them with the main mission of sharing the Gospel. During this tour the founder showed us that he lived in the poverty stricken, violent neighborhood that the Hope Center was affecting. This was a great lesson on how to minister. If you want to minister to people then live with them and get to know the people, the culture and the problems so God can use you most effectively. After the tour we ate lunch and helped clean a house, that was in the same neighborhood that was going to be given to one of the people helping start the leadership development program at the center, and helped clean out a church that the Hope Center prays to use one day to open up their ministry to adults. On Wednesday I had bread and peanut butter for breakfast and again hopped in a Kanakuk van to go serve at the Hope center. Wednesday was all about serving. For most of the morning and afternoon we cleaned and cleared out the church mentioned earlier, so by the time it was done, it was almost ready for service. That night we went to a lady's house that we had met earlier in the year and ate what most people would consider a feast. Afterwards we were done we cleaned off the tables and made 400 bagged lunches that were going to passed out the next morning at 4:45 a.m. Wednesday night we slept easy knowing that the hard work was over and that we would return to Branson the next day. Woke Thursday, ate some peanut butter and bread and got ready for the day. Today was different that Tuesday and Wednesday. Today we watched a movie. Not just any movie, but a movie about how Adam Donyes invested his time and energy into a special needs kid in Hollister, Branson's less affluent neighbor, and taught him how to play basketball and showed him that he had greater potential that he had ever known. This really motivated to find someone and really invest in their liv show them that God loves them and if they use the gifts that God has given them that they can acquire goals that they themselves did not believe they could achieve. In conclusion, I appreciated this week because it showed me how blessed I really am and how I should take advantage and be a good steward of what God has given me so I can truly fulfill my God given potential.