9/19/10

San Francisco! I love it!

Hello there from San Francisco!
I can’t believe it’s already been a week in the city! I’ve meet wonderful, beautiful people that have been such a blessing to me this week. I wish all of you could meet them. Well I will just give you some background on where I’m staying at in the city. I live in the Tenderloin, also known as the TL. It’s a really bad area of the city, I have crack dealers on my corner and there are none stop homeless people hanging out in the front of my building. It’s not crazy to see people doing drugs all day in the TL. I love it though, the conversations you will engage with people are out there. Most of the time people are just asking for money but it’s all good. I’m living at the YWAM base, (Youth With A Mission) and they own basically an apartment complex for staff and people like myself in school to live in. I’m in a room with four other awesome guys the size of a small studio room. It’s very tight living space, but us guys have very little. The ages of the guys in my room is from 17 to 30. It’s really fun. So my team is 14 people and 4 staff. 5 guys and 9 girls in the DTS (Discipleship Training School). It’s a great mix of people. So this first week has been mostly full of orientation and getting used to the day to day routine of things, like class, chores, and ministry. We didn’t do much ministry this week except hot chocolate ministry. Which is taking hot chocolate around the base and starting conversation with the people and blessing them with love and prayer. It was fun to go out and serve. This next week we have a speaker by the name Karri Manning, she will be speaking on Character and nature. Each week for 3 months we will have a guest speaker all week long and they will be speaking on different topics. I really excited to see what God has in store for me these next months of my life.

Some funny things that have happened to me over the last week, one night I was walking a crossed the street on my way back from Walgreens I had a construction cone thrown out of a window at me and it hit my leg…how random is that! I’ve been hit on by several people while in the TL….but not the ladies, guys or guys that are trying to be the ladies. It’s always a little awkward. We went to explore the city on Saturday to just get used to where everything is at and how to get back home from certain areas. A huge blessing is that they have provided us with bus passes to go everywhere, it’s like a fast track but for the transportation system! So cool!!

Could use prayer for strength and energy, as I’m not energized by being around people but drained from it and I’m always around people. The city is full of people my team I’m always around and the base is busy serving the homeless all day. So that’s huge. Second is to just mix well with my team. Not be the outsider but a support and blessing to each other. Third is to soak up as much Jesus as I can, not be distracted.