My kind of town

Can't you just hear good ole Frank singing it right now? "Chicago, Chicago, my kind of town."

I just returned from Chicago and how wonderful it was to be back in the city that captured my heart two years ago. The youth group I worked with was from a small town in Minnesota. They were wonderful! I seriously think that if a youth pastor designed their own kids to be in their youth group, they couldn't get a better group. I'm not kidding either! The trip did have some minor glitches, but I didn't loose anyone. No one died. And the kids had a great time!

Monday
We spent the day at The Greater Chicago Food Depository which is this huge warehouse that ships food to "agencies" in Cook County. Agencies would be food pantries, shelters, soup kitchens, etc. GCFD gets their food through donations from grocery stores, corporations (usually the "bad" products meaning that maybe the blue ink ran out at the Kraft factory so they get the boxes of Mac N Cheese that are red and yellow-perfectly good food), and by purchasing food with money from private funding. 30 percent of their labor is done by volunteers (which was us!) For the morning, we were assigned to the bread room where we were given the task of pulling and repackaging the good bread to be sent to agencies. We threw away almost 2,000 lbs of bread!! HOWEVER, we "rescued" close to 10,000 lbs. The afternoon was spent opening little boxes of candy and dumping them into HUGE boxes to be shipped out.

Tuesday
We spent the morning at the DuSable Museum of African American History. DuSable is actually considered the father of Chicago. The Dusable Museum was the first African American History museum in the nation which also makes it the oldest.

The afternoon was spent in my old neck of the woods at Cornerstone Community Outreach ( a homeless shelter in the Uptown neighborhood- run by Jesus People USA) We moved mattresses up 5 flights of stairs, helped in the free store, served dinner, and played with kids.

wednesday
Wednesday was spent working with Holy Family Lutheran Church in Cabrini-Green. They run a school further out in the West Side. We spent the day cleaning their classrooms and helping them get ready for school. My project for the day? Well, I tried to be like Neil Das (he's a librarian). I had the task of putting some organization into the elementary library. With the help of two youth, three bookshelves were cleared off, but the rest was left for the next volunteer group.

thursday was our free day and was spent exploring Chinatown, New Millenium Park, the Mag Mile, State Street, and the Museum of Scienc and Industry.