Reflection on Wednesday August 15

Wednesday August 15^th the 10 of us, and Pastor Richter, went to St. Mark Lutheran Church. Today was Olivia’s last day with us so we had a day to fill out an evaluation packet. Before we did that, as always, we did an opening worship. Our worship had a communion portion to it this morning. This was only the second time we have done communion together. It is nice sharing the bread and wine with the other people in the group. After worship we started with the packets. We sat separately and filled them out with quiet chat every once and a while. It was quite the quiet day until we all finished and got a nice break from writing for lunch. I think after being so quiet we were all ready to talk to each other since we have grown so close as a group. After our lunch we took our packets to the library and went over each section as a group. The answers we gave provided some good feedback, or so I thought. The end of our discussion was the feedback we gave on each other. We all shared stories about the work we did and had some great laughs. When we all talking I don’t think anyone wanted to leave because it felt like the last day even though most of us have two more days. 

When we finished talking about our stories we made our way back into the sanctuary for closing worship. Since it was Olivia’s last day with us we did a sending for her and wished her safe travels and the best at school. All of us will miss her the last two days and I hope she will miss us too! After our day of reflecting I hope our feedback will help the program grow. It has been such a great experience for me to be able to do such great things with such great people for the summer. I could not have asked for more through this job. 

- Kevin

Reflection on Tuesday August 14

Tuesday was my last day of work because I am headed back down south to school early. We were at the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer for our final week of work, working alongside Pastor Raymond again. But as opposed to the last time we had been there, to work with their Vacation Bible School program, we did work cleaning, fixing, and organizing things in and around the building. I started the morning with Genevee and Leela cleaning out the Sunday School room and reorganizing it to make it more usable. In the afternoon Kevin and I helped put together the bulletins for Sunday morning.

Both Monday and Tuesday we all made dishes to share for lunch and all had the opportunity to sit together and eat as a whole group which was so nice. I think we all wished that we had started doing that earlier because it really gave us an opportunity to talk and laugh and bond even closer. When we are working in all sorts of various jobs around the churches in separated groups and pairs it is really nice to have time to be all together again. I have loved being a part of this group because we all got along really well and learned a lot from one another, growing in our faith and having some awesome experiences. Plus we laugh almost constantly while working and singing and bonding. I expected to come into this experience and do work and meet some nice people who would be my coworkers; instead, we became friends.

As I was writing this blog post from the car, I got a phone call from the group as they were doing their devotions because they wanted me to be with them while they prayed. How many people would think that ten young adults would grow so close in faith during seven weeks of working together? At an age when most people lose touch with their faith and fellow Christians, we have had this opportunity to form relationships with one another that will hopefully keep us in touch and connected to the church. Working in and around Trenton, we have been a witness to the fact that young adults can share the love of God with others and work in His name. Yes, we have been able to do a good bit of dirty work and physical labor to help the churches, but I think greater than that is what we were able to gain and display to the world in terms of strengthening our faith and our desire to be involved with the life of the church.

- Olivia 

Reflection on Monday August 13

               Today we were at Lutheran Church of the Redeemer with Pastor Raymond. After our opening devotion, we split up into three groups. The guys went outside, two of us started polishing offering plates, and the rest went upstairs to clean the sanctuary. I’m not sure there’s much to say about today, because that’s pretty much all we did, aside from lunch, but I’ll get to that. Apparently, there was a lot of gum found stuck underneath the pews in the sanctuary. I thought that was pretty gross. I believe Pastor Raymond is going to address that at worship on Sunday.

               Lunch-what can I say? It was awesome. We decided to do a potluck, so we all (technically only most of us...but I digress) brought different dishes to share with each other. We had several chicken dishes, rice, pasta, chili, cornbread, and a dessert called Heavenly Salad. It was made with crushed pineapple, strawberry Jell-O, Cool Whip, and cottage cheese. Not everyone liked it, but I thought it was really good. Needless to say, everyone was pleasantly full afterwards. Tomorrow, we’re doing another potluck, so the people who forgot can bring something. I’m pretty excited about that. Perhaps we shouldn’t have done it on a Monday.

             

  Lunch was definitely the best part of the day. It’s always nice to sit down and have fellowship with each other. I think it just added to that feeling bringing all the different dishes together to have a meal.

- Rachel

Reflecting on Monday July 9

Hi! My name is Amanda. I'm 25 years old, and a sort-of member of Abiding Presence Lutheran Church (in reality, I'm Catholic). Part of my family is originally from Trenton. My Gram grew up on a farm in North Trenton, if you can believe it. However, my mom and dad chose to raise my brother and I in Levittown, right across the river.

Despite my Roman Catholic background, I wanted to join Lutherans In Trenton because of my close ties to my Gram, who is a member of the Lutheran Church. Additionally, I wanted to join due to my fierce love of Trenton. The prevalent problem of homelessness was another deciding factor in my decision to join Lutherans in Trenton. 

Monday started off with preparing for the start of vacation bible school. Katrina, Olivia, Genevee, and Nulah were the members of LIT who were at Saint Bart's with me. Of course, lots of parishioners were also at Saint Bart's to help.

I was put with the rainbows, who are five children who have just finished from 2^nd and 3^rdgrades. Each group has a fun hand motion and sound that we're supposed to do when we move from room to room. Ours is moving our hands in an arc while saying, “whoop, whoop, whoop.”

The other big thing that happened that I got put in charge of teaching everyone the hand motions for the VBS songs. Saint Bart's theme is Sky this year, so a lot of the songs have flying motions. It's a ton of fun. Thursday's song has dance moves that involve jumping up and down.

I'll be back on the 23rd-- in the mean time, stay tuned for some of my peer's posts!

Reflecting on Friday, August 3

Today we were at Abiding Presence again to continue some of the work we didn’t get to on Monday. Pastor Dan Whitener was with us again whom did a wonderful job keeping us busy. He had set up a sweet list for us to work on and check off. We cut down the last big tree that was growing between some other trees where it did not belong. The jobs we did today we mostly to upkeep the outside of the building like weeding, re-painting signs, and mulching most of the gardens. The memorial garden was our big weeding project. There were a ton of things growing through out the plants and now that we have gotten there it looks beautiful as ever! As we did that we had some people painting the letters on the sign out front so that everyone driving by could hear the good news. The group ended the day by all coming together and mulching the gardens around the building. Everyone was taking turns pushing the wheel borrow back and forth to pick up the mulch because it was all the way on the opposite side of the building. Hard work, but great exercise if you ask me!

Something new we have started is that when we work we enjoy listening to music. In my opinion, the music is making us work more efficiently and bringing us together. The best parts of my day are when we are working in a small group and some of us are singing a laughing while pulling weeds from the garden and before we know it, the garden is weed-less. It does not seem to matter what the music is although, we do enjoy having a Disney soundtrack on in the background. The little things such as music seem the just bring us closer and closer as a group everyday.

As a group, I feel that everyone is working hard together and I personally have not heard a single person complain about a job or another person once. It’s a great experience being around so many strong people in more than a physical way. The only true problem we had today was that there were too many people to have everyone mulching at once and this was resolved very quickly by just setting up stations and a rotation so that everyone could have a turn. Something that we have started, that I am taking a liking to, is that we end the day by talking about what worked that day and what could be better. I feel it is the perfect way to discuss how we can be more productive for the rest of our time on the job. I could not be happier with the way the job and group is turning out.

-Kevin Nowak

Reflecting on Thursday, August 2

               This morning was spent pulling up bricks beside the sidewalk at Prince of Peace. It was hard work, but we powered through and got almost the entire job done before lunch. It was extremely frustrating to get so close to finishing only to run out of time. We met the Parish Administrator and a few others members of the church who all thanked us for our work.

               We also caught a brief glimpse of the Cherry Tree Club program when the bus arrived with the kids while we worked outside. I think it would have been nice to spend some time really talking about the Cherry Tree Club and maybe get a chance to ask questions to the workers and volunteers just to get a more complete picture of what the Cherry Tree Club is.

               After lunch, we drove down the road to St. Paul’s and were met by Pastor Lydia. After a quick tour and some introductions, we car-pooled into Hightstown to see RISE. We spoke with Leslie Koppel, and then walked the few blocks to the Rise Thrift Store. There, we did a short walk around and a few of us made purchases. We bid farewell to Leslie and walked to our cars to drive back to St. Paul’s for closing devotion.

-Rachel

Reflecting on Monday, July 30

This week with LiT is suburb week, meaning that we are doing work with churches in the surrounding towns, as opposed to the churches in the city of Trenton. Today, the whole group was at Abiding Presence in Ewing, NJ. We worked with Pastor Dan Whitener (aka my dad) in projects in and around the church building. I personally helped move brush from trees that we were cutting down around the parking lot, as well as doing a good bit of weeding during the afternoon. Working in the gardens was actually pretty fun and rewarding, and the sun was not too, too hot today, which made the work a lot easier. Plus, as a group, we are growing closer and more comfortable with each other so we have plenty to talk and laugh about as we work.

The morning began with a talk from one of the members of APLC, David Olson, on the topic of the solar panel grids that the church uses to produce energy. He shared with us the steps of the project from beginning in 2006, to completion in 2009, to how they are working today in 2012. It was so interesting to hear about how they work, as well as discussing the concerning topics of energy conservation and climate control. Though not exactly what we expected to be doing with this experience, it was a great opportunity to learn about how we can help the environment and therefore preserve God’s beautiful Earth for as long as possible.

One of my favorite aspects of this program is that we start and end each day with devotions as a group. In addition to prayer and song, we are reading the book of Acts together. We kind of just decided one day to read through Acts, but as we began reading we realized that no other book of the Bible could be as applicable to this program as it is. Acts is the book of the Bible in which Jesus’ disciples, and Saul turned Paul, are sent out on their own to begin spreading Christianity and explaining to people that Jesus is the Messiah. Though we are not evangelizing as much as they did, it is interesting to read about their travels and struggles in spreading the good news of Jesus on their own, without any direct guidance from a leader, just led by their faith. Similarly, the ten of us are all doing work and learning to lead and trust in God outside of the comforts of our own congregations. Some days our direction is more obvious, but other days we have to think harder about how we have seen Jesus working in our lives. But through the experience as a whole, I can personally say that my faith is growing and being nurtured by living and working with the group and helping the churches in the ways that we have.

--Olivia