I wanted to share another experience from our first trip, a few years ago.. Ás I’ve talked about before, 4 students and 6 chaperones (overkill, I know) took 2 vehicles to NYC and stayed at a church in Brooklyn. On street parking, which we were lucky enough to find 2 spots in front of our home church the night we arrived. Because of street cleaning, however, the cars had to be moved every 2 days…. along with cars from everyone else in the neighborhood… which, as you might imagine, is no small task. The gentlemen who came with us on the trip were kind enough to wake up early on the day they were to be moved. I underestimated exactly what that meant, and I believe they did as well! After two hours of looking for a place to park, they finally found a gated lot they could park for $25.00 per day and parked both vehicles. After conferring with our leader, we decided to leave the cars there for the rest of the week – not having the aggravation of moving the cars was worth $25.00 per day.
An example of a really good decision made on the fly while serving the under-served in New York City.
We went about our missions projects (which I promise to write about) and got up Saturday morning to come home. I was in our dorm room vacuuming the floor (and cheerfully humming a happy tune) when the other lady chaperones came to me with concerned looks on their faces. I shut the vacuum off to see what was wrong. I thought perhaps someone had gotten hurt. The guys had just gone to get the cars from the lot, only to find the lot is closed on the weekends!
Hilarious. I break into hysterical laughter for a few seconds before I realized the look on their faces dictated I should not have been laughing. They were genuinely concerned! I had to work really hard to keep a straight face – I’m not sure if it’s because I have a good 15 years on them and have experienced travel delays and other times when things don’t go as planned or if I was simply happy enough to spend more time in New York City, I just didn’t share their concern. I knew enough about people, though, to empathize with their stress.
Fairly quickly, we began to put together “plan b” for getting the people home who absolutely had to be home to be at work on Monday morning. I quickly volunteered to stay and wait for the garage to open. HAHA YAY! another weekend in NYC! I loved it!
Turns out that one of our gentlemen is not only friendly, but resourceful and managed to find a phone number to call the owner of the garage, who, for a fee, was more than willing to come and let the cars out. This escapade delayed our return trip just a few hours – and, amazingly enough, afforded us the opportunity to work in the kitchen of the church where we had stayed, and service their community breakfast. Turns out that they had 9 volunteers call-off that morning, and there were 10 of us!
God, in His infinite wisdom, allowed our “misfortune” to be turned to blessing. Ah, He does that so often!
My hope is that everyone learn to live life seeing the miracles of God unfold before their eyes! God is truly amazing, even in the midst of what seems like a crisis…. I’d call it a Chrisis!
Blessings to you,
1SB
Journey-For-Life 