See you again soon The Hill Church

Our final day on Market Street started with breakfast in the community room with our team and members of The Hill Church community. It was nice to see the families that we had met and connected with the previous 48 hours.

The Sunday service was at 11:00 a.m. And while this might seem normal for most other churches - having a Sunday service in the morning - this was the first Sunday morning worship service in their sanctuary in two years. Pastor Ricardo was encouraged to see some new faces in the congregation. It was cool to be a part of a milestone for this ministry team. You could feel God's presence as two of our team members helped lead the worship songs with our new neighbors from Allison Hill.

As we prepared to return home after our three days in Harrisburg, we discussed since The Hill Church is so close staying involved with this community could easily continue on a regular basis. That was our challenge from God as we departed ... the relationships we developed are worth investing in further so our team is going to pray individually to find out what that next step is for each of them.

Loving, Painting, and Playing with our Neighbors: Day 2
Our Ladies Painting Party event was finally here! We have prayed, planned, and prepared for this event to bless and connect with the ladies in the Allison Hill Community for a long time. Our morning had arrived. It was such a blessing to see ladies we met at The Hill Church festival last week, residents from the neighboring Shalom House, as well as welcome new faces. We were encouraged by a good attendance of enthusiastic women and we also enjoyed babysitting some of their wonderful children.
The painting of a dandelion in the wind was accompanied by a devotional reminding the women that we are all loved by our creator (Genesis 1:26-27, 31). It was a tremendous opportunity for our team to learn more about our neighbors while serving and painting beside them! The joy and laughter in the room was contagious.  You could see and feel the weight of their burdens being lifted with each paint stroke.
Meanwhile, in the babysitting room, we tapped into the children's energy playing Pictionary, dance parties, and good old Duck, Duck, Goose! The smiles, hugs, and laughter from these children will last far longer than this weekend.
In the evening, we donned our stylish black and white serving outfits for the dinner prepared by Pastor Ricardo's talented chef brother, Jude. We felt like we were sous chefs on a Food Network show! And we were able to practice some culinary skills like peeling and cutting 50 pounds of potatoes. Six  of our team members were able to share their testimonies throughout the dinner. It was amazing to see and hear how God used their stories to make connections. We enjoyed a scrumptious meal and conversations with members of The Hill Church and families from the Allison Hill community.
And now we look forward to being with our neighbors on the last day at The Hill Church. As their motto goes, " Life is better together." We agree!

Loving Our Neighbors: Day 1
After a welcoming introduction from Pastor Ricardo in the newly named "Community Room" at The Hill Church, our team hit the ground running  by dividing and conquering our tasks for the morning. One group put their gardening skills to work and cleaned up a garden at The Shalom House after storm damage. They even had the chance to harvest some of the crops and make a delicious vegetable soup and salad. This was a farm to table experience at its best!
Another group took on the many tasks of cleaning and organizing rooms in this early 1800 church on Market Street. Walls and floors were scrubbed, offices were organized, and windows were washed . It was a floor to ceiling endeavor with many hands! Some ladies ventured on prayer walks and were able to interact with our neighbors in Allison Hill.
In the evening, we had the opportunity to babysit Pastor Ricardo's beautiful children and allow him to take his wife Christian on a dinner date. We also prepared food and painting stations for our  Ladies' Painting Class tomorrow. Our team is encouraged from our experiences for our first day and we are excited to meet more of our neighbors tomorrow!

Preparing to partner with The Hill Church in Harrisburg

Our 2017 stateside team of 13 Daybreak women are excited to serve in the community of Allison Hill in Harrisburg coming up August 11-13.

Each individual has been called by God to serve, and together we are prepared to support The Hill Church Pastor Ricardo Volcy and his team.

We've been working hard during our spirited and in-depth team meetings to connect as a group and opening our hearts and minds so we are fully prepared to serve The Hill Church and the surrounding community.

The 2017 Daybreak Stateside team is comprised of: Kelly Argot, Lorrie Blaisdell, Karen Hartenstine, Amanda Johnson, Grace Kindt, Diane Langner, Christa Laubach, Beth Reiner, Bev Rider, Stacy Salter, Maureen Shay, Dani Talarowski and Laura Williams.

Please pray for our team as we each take another step forward in our journey of sharing God's word and love.

Day 4 already?!!?!

While each day has been chock full of work, beauty, and God’s goodness, this trip has moved SO quickly! We had another beautiful day of plunging the richness of God’s will for us here in Philly. What’d we do today? Well, at the Tyson Ave campus of True Vine, we got a 2^nd coat of paint on the three children’s rooms, cleaned all the toys and chairs that were in those rooms, swept and mopped all the rooms (the crazy paint scrapings from earlier in the week were quite the little buggers to get off of everything), hung some decorative items for them, vacuumed the sanctuary, swept the stairs, and more! We were blessed with lunch made by one of True Vine’s generous members. We also got to help a family from True Vine move into a new house today! Can you believe that they were driving from Allentown to Philly every weekend to attend – AND that they were high level volunteers who show up to church (with their kids) super early every Sunday? We busted through a full size UHAUL truck, plus a minivan in about an hour (with help from a few True Vine members as well). After dinner (thanks Pastor Luis for grilling for us!), we headed back to Tyson Ave for a prayer meeting. We weren’t quite sure what to expect, but basically it was 90 minutes of Holy Spirit led, God’s presence infused time with a worship leader singing and leading us into God’s presence, and us praying silently and out loud to bless True Vine, tomorrow’s church service, and the local community. We ended the prayer meeting by partnering up with a True Vine church member, us praying for them and their church family, and them praying for us. You should be SO proud of this team! There have been fears conquered, many firsts, so much love and encouragement expressed between team members and more. This random team of 11 people is now a tight knit, affirming family. What a blessing it’s been. Tomorrow is one more full day. We’ll be running Children’s Ministry at both campuses (Wissinoming at 10:30 and Tyson Ave at 1:00). Before that we’ll be doing some cleaning and packing. After that, we’ll be spending some time sharing life with Tyson Ave members after their service, then finishing up with a few debriefs of our trip and a final bless to affirm each other as well as the AMAZING pastors we’ve worked with and the interns here supporting them and us. Good night (or well, now – good morning!)

The Treasure Hunt

Does God have a specific person that He wants us to talk to today? That was the question that Pastor Jim challenged us with this morning before we traveled to downtown Philly.  He led us in a time of listening to God to see if there was a specific word, image, or name that would lead us to a specific person.  God did indeed give us what seemed like random words, images and names.  We typed up the list, made 40 lunches, and headed to downtown Philly to spread God’s love to the homeless and see what God had in store!

We broke into groups of two, overcame our fears, and asked homeless people if we can share our lunch with them.  Many of them agreed and even let us pray for them! We learned their stories and showed that we cared.  Some people blessed us as much as we blessed them. We were all incredibly moved by being able to be the hands and feet of Jesus.

Meanwhile, we were on a “treasure hunt” for people that matched the words, images, and names that God gave us earlier.  One homeless man matched one name that we had written down.  Another was wearing a heart symbol that matched one that we had drawn.  Another person was wearing a batman symbol that we had seen.  Yet a lot of the items on the list went unmatched.  This led one group to go around to random people in the Reading Terminal Market asking strangers if they had the names that matched the names on our sheet.  That didn’t yield any results but it sure was fun! More on the treasure hunt later…

It is so apparent that Pastor Jim and Luis are completely engaged in serving and blessing Philadelphia.  They can hardly talk about anything else! They deeply want to help the neighborhoods know Jesus, love Him, and love each other.  They work hard at it.  So we sent Jim, Luis, and their spouses out on a date while we watched their kids!  After the kids went to bed, we watched the documentary http://www.letthefireburn.com/ and Pastor Jim came home and challenged us to think about what we can do in the Harrisburg area to foster racial reconciliation.  It was a tough question that we wrestled with.

We ended the night with an amazing discovery.  After affirming what God is doing in each of our lives, we circled back around to the treasure hunt.  We realized that a person matching about half of the words on the printed sheet was one of our own team members!  We took that as a sign from God that we should all circle around and pray specifically for that team member.  It was an awesome moment and a wonderful end to the day!

Paint, Prayer, and Pizza

Philadelphia Day 2 started out as a drizzly day outside, but it wouldn’t dampen our team spirit! We continued on to scraping and painting the True Vine Tyson Avenue children’s rooms. It took many hands and a lot of hard work. Luis served us a great lunch and we enjoyed sharing about the “early days” of Daybreak. We went back to work for a few more hours of painting. Then we headed out to the neighborhoods of Philly for prayer walks. Four groups spread out and canvased the areas, praying for the needs of each community. Among other things, all four groups felt the need to pray for fatherless families. After the prayer walking, Pastor Jim hosted our group at his home for dinner. We had 2 of the world’s largest pizzas, and there wasn’t much left over. After we were full, we debriefed on the prayer walking and discussed the changes happening in the neighborhoods of Philadelphia. It was great to hear the insight of Pastor Jim and an elder from True Vine. Upon returning to the Wissinoming campus in the evening we returned to another service project: We helped prepare fruit to bless the local school teachers on their last day of school tomorrow. We wrapped up with another team debrief to affirm and encourage each other. We’re looking forward to eating lunch with the homeless tomorrow and exploring Center City a bit. Thanks for all your prayer for us. We’re all healthy and loving what God is doing in and through us.