Soggy Socks and Sandwiches

The day had finally arrived.

We were ready, had a strategy.

After more than two months of preparing and waiting, WE FINALLY HAD A TEAM TO HOST.

From Thursday to Sunday, the 9^th to 12^th of October, a team of Messiah College students served with Priority 1. This weekend had a big circle around it on our calendars, because this team was the first that we would help to lead around the city. This team, Lord help them, would also serve as an experiment of sorts: we didn’t know exactly how it would all work out, how the roles would be divided, how Ginny would get to school, etc.

I, Greg, did as much as I could without actually staying in the Priority 1 apartment with the team, while Bonnie (Priority 1’s Director) and Amber (P1’s Children’s Ministries Coordinator) both stayed with them at the apartment. Our own apartment is either a 10-minute ride or a 30-minute walk away, depending on whether buses show up regularly or not. I learned that the buses don’t come nearly as often at 7am on a Saturday as they do during the week, and thus I had a half-hour stroll in the dark morning drizzle. I also learned that my shoes are insufficient as rainwear.

The first two evenings the team helped out at the after-school program run by the school where Ginny attends. They split up among the different classes and helped with homework, singing and dancing, crowd control, and, of course, snacks. The kids were really excited to have some volunteers, especially when they found out they would be there two days in a row!!

Friday morning was spent at the World Vision Storehouse, a facility that collects lots of corporate donations and then distributes them in the South Bronx and beyond, and in particular they help school teachers who don’t have enough supplies. We sorted jeans and polo shirts into bundles, then did the same with boxes full of hats. It’s admittedly tedious work (especially when we discover that we had packed all the bundles wrong and would have to re-sort and re-bag them – an issue that may or may not have been my fault), but it’s a good reminder that building up the Kingdom of God often takes the form of doing manual, unskilled labor for little or no compensation. Those bundles of clothes and hats will go to organizations that work with the homeless, domestic abuse victims, underprivileged kids, and on and on, and someone had to package them up.

Sandwich-making fiends

My personal favorite activity took place on Saturday morning (despite my aforementioned soggy socks). We caravanned to the HQ of Manna of Life Ministries, a group who provides food and love to the homeless. The Messiah group got their gloves and hairnets on, then made a whole bunch of PBJ and tuna sandwiches. We then caravanned to three different sites, spending the longest time at a homeless shelter called The Living Room. I didn’t know exactly what to expect: in the past we had been permitted to go up and talk and pray with the people staying there; other times we were only allowed to hand out the food down on the sidewalk outside the building. This time, after handing out the food, we did indeed go upstairs. After the team sang a song they had (hastily) prepared, Jasmine, a woman who works with Manna of Life and who had herself once been homeless, stood and basically preached a salvation message to the people. She spoke with passion and excitement of our need for Jesus to forgive and transform us. Then the team spread out, with prayer request cards in hand, and had the chance to talk with some of the people there. It was wonderful. Several of the team even had the chance to pray with people there. I am grateful to have been a part of this time.

Two of our stops were at gas stations where day workers gather, waiting for work. These guys stand around hoping that someone will come by and offer them work for the day: sometimes they get work, sometimes they don’t. We came, lined up with sandwiches, stew, fruit, and juice for any and all who wanted some. At the last stop several of the men joined our group as we circled up and prayed.

It's New York, right? Gotta get some pizza.

The last major component of the weekend was a photo scavenger hunt that we call the AmazinGrace. We hand the team a list of landmarks throughout the city to pray at and photograph, then pat them on the head and wish them well. They get a chance to navigate the subways themselves and see how well they can get around on their own.

They all survived. They even all made it back to the P1 apartment in the Bronx!

They were a wonderful team, and we look forward to hosting many, many more.

I slept well after they left.

17 More Things We've Learned Since Moving to New York City

1. We’ll have to get used to going food shopping once a week or more. Our fridge/freezer and pantry are simply not big enough to hold much more than that.
2. If you do have to go to the store (an Aldi just opened ten minutes away!), go when you have to move your car anyway for the street sweeper.
3. Make sure you carefully read posted parking signs. Pay particular attention to start and end times, if there are any. Failing to do this may cost you sixty bucks.
4. Public schools (and street sweepers) in New York City observe all kinds of holidays. Students had two days off for Rosh Hashanah a couple of weeks ago. (Ginny’s Christian school was, however, still in session.)
5. Just because you live within yards of dozens of people doesn’t mean that you’ll see them very much, if at all. Walking back from the bus stop last week Ginny and I met a woman and her two kids who live on the 5^th floor. In two months I’d seen the son once or twice, but never the mom.
6. Be prepared for the cost of your car insurance to triple. Yes, TRIPLE.

   

   Friends from PA--a family of 

   6--visited one weekend

7. Finding a church that preaches the Bible is non-negotiable. The weekly smacks in the face are necessary.
8. If you choose not to put your 4 year-old in Pre-K, be prepared that there will be NO other kids her age at story time in the library, because pretty much all the 4 year-olds in the City are in Pre-K.
9. It is indeed possible to fit an additional family of 6 into your already tight 3-bedroom apartment. For one night, at least.
10. Doing laundry at the laundromat will get easier each time.
11. Setting up life in a new place takes time. More than two months here, and we’re still working on car insurance, setting up doctors, registering our van, getting new driver’s licenses, and figuring out where to put stuff in our apartment.
12. Having so much in walking distance from your house is awesome. Here’s a partial list of what we can walk to: bank, pharmacy, doctors for all five of us, post office, parks and playgrounds, coffee shops, Chinese restaurant, pizza places, numerous restaurants, several big stores, and probably hundreds of smaller shops.
13. We discovered, quite accidentally, that we can go out onto the roof of our building. There’s not much up there but satellite dishes and exhaust pipes, and the view isn’t as spectacular as I had hoped – I was holding out hope that we could at least see the Manhattan skyline, but alas – but it was still pretty neat to be up there.
14. Phone calls, texts, emails, Skype and Facetime sessions, and visits from friends and family are wonderful encouragements. (To be fair, we already knew this, but it bears repeating.) 
15. October is a wonderful month for parking. They suspend the street sweeping on 8 days this month, and if you play it right, you can leave your car in the same place for almost three weeks!
16. Prayer is vital to, well, everything. Big and small, “spiritual” and “ordinary.” We knew this as well, of course, but we are repeatedly reminded of it.
17. Even though our home is significantly smaller than our previous one, we still manage to lose things. Currently, we have misplaced one of our cell phone chargers.

    

    Sunset view from the rooftop of our building

"That's Just How We've Always Done It"

Stopped in traffic on the 207th Street Bridge

We used to poke fun at locals in Pennsylvania, both in Juniata County (where we taught high school for two years) and in Franklin County (where we lived for eight years). Though born-and-raised Pennsylvanians ourselves, we each hail from different parts of the state. And we saw everywhere a kind of indigenous logic that the "natives" simply seemed to know, but which non-natives such as ourselves struggled to comprehend. Have you ever gotten directions from someone who included landmarks that no longer exist? (Our favorite in Franklin County was “Turn where the Sheetz used to be.”) Bizarre intersections mock common sense (“Stop except left turn”), but somehow traffic flows through them without incident (most of the time, of course). If you’ve ever been frustrated by local “traditions,” bristled when someone pines for “how it used to be,” or – worst of all – states the dreaded words “That’s just how we’ve always done it,” then you know what I mean.

New York City is completely different. Completely.

And by that I mean, of course, that their bizarre traditions and cultural oddities are different than the bizarre traditions and cultural oddities we had to learn in other places.

It doesn’t surprise us, really, that we’re still dealing with this stuff up here. We knew that we would become OAFs (Outsiders/Aliens/Foreigners) when we moved, and that learning how to do NYC life would take some time. And I should say that it has not been all weirdness and stress since we’ve been here – not at all. But the weird things do stand out, of course.

We haven’t been here long, and I’m sure we’ll have more examples as time goes by, but for us so far, the most glaring example of this cultural weirdness has to be parking. It’s crazy and terrible and stressful. Most places, outside of big cities, take parking for granted. Wherever one goes, whether to Walmart, the post office, the grocery store, or a friend’s house, there will be parking; when I go home, I will park in my garage/driveway/etc. Not so in the city.

Parking is a crapshoot. Unless you pay exorbitant fees for reserved spaces, there is no guarantee that you will be able to find a convenient parking spot anywhere, including where you live. As a general rule, if you can take public transportation somewhere, then you should take public transportation. We’ve been to a particular church four times now, and haven’t driven there once, even though it would definitely be faster than taking the bus. But there’s hardly anywhere to park, so we bus it.

Complicating everything is the misery that is alternate-side parking. This video from the New York Times explains it much better than I would be able to: Swept Away: The Parking Dance in New York City (I am all for the councilman's proposal, incidentally).

I am constantly thinking about our van and where it’s parked. How long can I leave it there? Did I fold back my side view mirror? After I come back from dropping Ginny off at school, will there be a spot on the right side of the street? If not, what am I going to do for the hour and a half when I can’t park there? What about if someone comes to visit us? Where will they park?

It’s weird that I am constantly thinking about parking. But ironically, stressing out about parking, I’ve found, makes me fit right in with car owners in New York City. Everybody deals with this! It’s reassuring to find out that you’re not the only one who has a problem, that someone else (or in fact, everybody else) has the same issues you do.

Our first busted mirror

So yes, it’s weird, and the system has lots of flaws. But we’re learning some strategies, some little tricks (we found two nearby grocery stores that do have small parking lots, so I’ll go when they sweep the street).

And I’ll never again take a parking space for granted. Even if all the locals are weird.