So you know how as soon as you complain about something it gets better? Yeah.
The past few days have been so busy and good. I don’t know where to begin.
Saturday I spent some time exploring Glebe, which is a suburb really close to the city. Every Saturday there’s a market with handmade purses and jewelry or clothes, and it’s a really trendy part of Sydney. Lots of sunglasses and skinny jeans.
That night I did my first time at my service placement. Every ASC student has to log 35 hours of service with a local mission we’re assigned to. I’m doing mine with Jesus Cares, a food van. We made about 12 million sandwiches before having a short worship/prayer service with the other 8 or so volunteers and then headed into the city. We stopped at 3 places, set up our tables of sandwiches, soup, cake, cookies, tea, coffee and meat pies, handed out food and fellowship, and then packed up and moved out. I haven’t had much experience at all with ministering to homeless. I did help at the Grant Co. Rescue Mission for a little bit, and went to Indianapolis for it once, but I ever really purposefully engaged with homeless before. And it was so much fun. Most of the guys we gave dinner to were regulars, and had become good friends with the Jesus Cares volunteers. And they were so funny, too. One guy, Colin, was all about telling and hearing jokes. And another man was singing and dancing and making everyone laugh. Except for at Woollomooloo, which is a part of Sydney that is apparently a little dodgy. When we stopped there, one of the regular volunteers told me ‘This is a different kind of homeless,’ and I believe her. There was no laughter or singing; people just got their food and left. Bill, the head of Jesus Cares, said that the people there were practically unemployable, and most of them don’t have a lot of hope. It is so strange to see what a huge difference that makes. I’m so glad I was put in this ministry, and I’m really looking forward to going back out and exchanging jokes with Colin.
Tuesday night some Australian friends invited us Americans to an ‘Australian Initiation’ which began with Thai food dinner and ended with licking peanut butter off someone’s foot. We had a night where we all tried classic Australian food like Vegemite, Musk candy/dryer sheets, and Milo among others. After all that, we had some extreme dares where people ate spoonfuls of Vegemite, sang patriotic songs to neighbors and yes, licked peanut butter off feet. Luckily, I didn’t have to do any of those things.
Sorry this is forever long, and I didn’t even get to talk about going around the city on Sunday, or the church I visited, or (most importantly) Dominion: the greatest board/card game invented by the Germans. When I get around to it, I’ll try to put some pictures up so you can all see the sights.
current song: Ruby by the Kaiser Chiefs
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