June 1st

You have to love first night blog posts! So let me tell you what I am thinking this very moment. I am not sure how often I will be updating because I do not have the internet available as close as I thought I would, therefore, this post is being written in word and will be copy and pasted later (sorry for the delay). Secondly, I can literally see the 2 train out of my window and yes it rattles me a little bit every time it goes by our room. Finally, you should all consider yourselves lucky because on our way to the house tonight I saw a gas station boasting an unleaded fuel price at $4.39!

I love and hate the feeling of stepping outside of the airport on a mission trip. From that first step on I found myself once again utterly helpless and dependent on the people who were immediately around me. This feeling does not come up to often and so I love to take hold of it any time it does, so today I embraced the idea that I am entirely dependent on God, first and foremost, and also very importantly dependent on my fellow man and woman.

My second thought was how lucky am I to have the opportunity to experience the Bronx for an entire 10 weeks! The buildings are awesome. The diversity is awesome. The atmosphere is awesome.

The next thing that popped into my head happened on the subway riding uptown to the Bronx. I do not mean this in a good or bad way, but simply as an observation . . . I often do not find myself being a minority in many places, but after two stops in the Bronx (the second being for Yankee Stadium) I immediately noticed that I was in the minority. That of course is a different feeling since I am not used to it and it is of course a very exciting and new feeling. For the past two summers I have been able to be with people groups that were largely from one distinct culture and being in New York that is obviously as far from my situation this summer than anything. Our first meal here in New York was at a mom and pop Albanian shop where we ate some sort of pizza contraption that was extremely delicious! Our choices consisted of veggie, cheese, or meat. I chose meat.

We then proceeded to eat in a park and begin to dive into what we would be doing and some of the thought processes behind the Bronx Fellowship Church. We talked about tons of ideas and hopefully I will be able to express them more clearly once I understand them as we go!

My excitement level is out of the roof and I am going to attempt to go to sleep running on adrenaline and with the train clunking by every three minutes. Jared Looney (one of the missionaries), who has been here for over 7 years reminded us that we will be experiencing so much in the next week and our senses will be on overdrive taking in so many things trying to download and process the things we see, hear, taste, touch, and smell. I cannot wait to experience these new things and I love this heightened sense of awareness, but of course it comes with a quick fatigue!

As a final side note, I have placed links to Katie’s blog and to the Bronx Fellowship website, if you would like to take a gander from time to time to see what’s going on there! Prayers for energy, awareness, learning, and for God’s Spirit to be present in the lives of those we will come in contact with are very welcome and we thank you for them!