it's the hardknock life...

soooo it's been about a week now since i first came here...
i'm already starting to feel at home here, again, the young adults group, the interns, the church staff, and all the people inbetween, are sooo welcoming, and have all been so amazing to me.

i went to the Christian Centre Church service on sunday, and it was pretty awesome.
the worship team is amazing... it's like gospel Hillsong with some like kinda carribean/exotic flavour.... haha there was just a drummer, keyboard, and bongo's, and singers.... like kinda soulful women singers, and the lead singer was awesome too.... good worship leader... and she'd always say Hallelujah! hahahaha, but it was awesome, and the children's pastor was preaching that sunday about mother's day, but overall it was a really good service. Very charismatic, very lively... really positive, cultural, spirited vibe in the congregation. it was really different from the chinese christian churches.... automatically, you can compare kinda how conservative we usually are, well at my church at least.

after church, they always have 'soulfood' which is just a lunch at john knight's house for anyone after service... so it's really good fellowship, really good conversations and stuff, i've met so many people it;'s so hard to keep track. and again everyone is from different parts of the world! one guy i met was from stratford, there are some girls from ghana, asha's from bermuda, chris the sick drummer is from the bahamas, audrey is from vancouver, jessie is from perry sound, john;s from oshawa, yohan is from bombay, pastor olu is from new york, sarah's from st. catherines... i dont know.. everyone's from everywhere, but then we';re all brought together... it's a pretty cool thing.

anyway, these past few days, we've been really really working with the kids... like the jr. high kids. so my schedule for the past week has been....
in the morning....
- we meet together, but have some individual time of prayer and meditation
- then come together and pray together and share prayer requests
- then we do some admin stuff, do random stuff that needs to be done... like some planning, errands, etc...
- then we all eat lunch together
- afterward, we do a bible study with just us interns, we've been doing 1 Samuel so far....
- then we prepare for afterschool program, and on tuesday we went to go hang out with some of the low income senior people that live next door.
- then we run the afterschool program that consists of some basketball, and like a homework club, so like a chunk of time where the kids do their homework... but it's not as easy as this... i'll share more about an interesting story that happened to me today
- afterschool program ends at around 6, then we usually walk some of them home, or cook dinner, then dinner, then on tuesday i had a night off, wednesday i tutored a highschool kid in gr.11 math (lol, me of all people, tutoring...MATH?!?!?! ...yeah i know...)
- on thursdays we run a basketball houseleague program for the youth at the jr. high next door.


but ok, so here's some stories....
so there's this cool kid named marlin. he kinda looks like yung joc. hahaa but he's a cool kid. he's in gr.7, and i walked him home yesterday, he lives in the building next to me. i think there's a really good mentoring opportunity right there.... he just had a rough incident yesterday where he beat up a kid cause another kid said something really offensive... anyway, i was just talking to him, and he just randomly asks me...
m: can you fight?
j: ...ummmm... why do you ask?
m: you have to be able to fight! if you're black, you have to, to survive here....

he asked me where i'm from, and i said scarborough, and he's like...'yo, they're all soft there...." and he's right. it's true... scarborough is soooo soft compared to the people here. i never really feel scared in scarborough... but it's different here... it really is...

another story.... today pastor olu asked me to do something with him,.... so we went to mississauga this afternoon to pick up some mattresses/boxsprings from some warehouse that provides free mattresses (with government policies, permission) to some government subsidized homes, so we were getting some for some lady in the community that doesnt go to church, but i think one of her kids goes to the afterschool program... but anyway, after bringing the mattresses to her home, like, it was such a huge contrast. it was honestly the worst conditioned house i've ever been inside. (i'm not trying to make fun of, or complain, but im just tryna give a description of it, and give you a better understanding of it, and how people really live there) the front door was broken first of all, and when you go in, there's a big stench... the walls have no distinct colour, as everything is soo worn down, and there are rips in the wallpaper, or the paint on the walls is coming off, and there's some writing on the walls, i went upstairs to move a mattress, and the railing on the stairs isn't even secure on the wall, so the railing is completely uesless, the floors were pretty gross, the rooms were pretty filthy and just the flooring and walls were in terrible condition... and there was a family with 2 little kids living there, and i just felt sooo bad. like we are sooo blessed and so fortunate.... we live in luxury, but there are people that live in such terrible conditions. when we removed one of the mattresses, i noticed how badly worn down the previous mattress was.... there were rips everywhere, it wasnt really a solid piece.... and it reeked of urine. it was terrible. it was definitely an eye opener, to some of the terrible conditioned homes there really are in toronto, and in this jane and finch community...

another story, today during homework club, i was helping a bunch of guys do their homework, and one guy, terrence, just would NOT do it, he said he hated math so much, and he didnt do anything, so i kept telling him to do some homework and he wouldnt... after asking him more times then he would say, OK FINE, but then just start copying down the answers from the back of the textbook... it was very difficult, but like after trying many many more times to get him to do homework, he like blew up at me, and like threw a chair.... and he got really mad at me, saying that i wouldn;t leave him alone, and i couldn't tell him to do homework, and i couldn't keep him there and stuff... all i was doing was just being there to help him with his homework and to get him to try and do some homework..... it was really difficult...

anyway, i'm really tired, long day... so i will probably end it here, but...
prayer requests:
- continual health and safety... i think im getting sick or something... i'm coughing here and there
- the kids/youth, that God remove the callices of their heart, and be more sensitive and receptive to hear God
- that me, and the rest of the team of interns, be transparent, and that God's glory, and love can be shown through us, and we can be reflections of Him.
- for God to remove social barriers whenever we interact with people.... it's socially unnatural for us humans to just approach people we don't know, and just love them... so for God to work in us to be able to do that and have compassion for people, and just approach people...

i think that's it. thanks for reading! please feel free to leave me a comment, or anything... i'd love to know who's reading this!

God bless