Kansas City, MO - Day 5

Sorry for the delay. Here is day 5 of my trip to Kansas City, Missouri.

The day began with breakfast and devotions. Then we headed out to the River of Refuge. This time I helped take out ceiling bars, you knows those metal bars that hold the cardboard tiles. I was paired with Annie 'cause it took about two people per room, one to get the bars and the other to hold the ladder and take the bars from the other person. In one of the rooms, Annie and I were trying to get one bar down and the entire ceiling bar network came down . . . except that one bar we were initially trying to get. But overall it was a lot of fun and I got to spend some time with Annie that I hadn't done before. Then we got to do some real demolition work. We started tearing down walls. That was so much fun. That is, until all the dust began swirling and insulation with fiberglass started coming out. But it was a great experience. It was incredible to see the amount of work that we could do when we all worked together. By the end of the day, the rooms that I had helped to remove ceiling bars from had been demolished of walls and room divisions and was one giant room. It was a beautiful sight to actually see physical evidence of our presence. A funny side note: during our lunch break John Wiley took a group of us to see the autopsy and operating rooms. It was so much fun with our group, especially since several of the girls are easily scared and the guys took advantage of that. Great time and not something that your average Joe would do. Also, while we were doing our demolition work, one of the homeless families came with CBN (Christian Broadcasting Network) to be shown where they will be moving into. It was a single mom with a little girl and a little boy and the mom has had to prostitute herself to earn enough money to support her two kids and pay the rent. When the reporter asked how the woman felt knowing that we, total strangers from California, were doing this for her, she began crying and said that she hadn't known that such love had even existed. It was truly touching moment. But the footage they shot and interviews they took will be shown on the 700 Club during the entire month of January. This is incredible exposure for not only the River of Refuge but for Ignite as well. After leaving the River of Refuge, we came back to the hotel and crashed. We all just took things easy. My roommates and I watched tv and talked. Then we all met up to go to On the Border (a mexican restaurant here in the midwest and east coast) for dinner. We had a great time just talking about what we'd done and life in general. Then we came back and went to bed knowing that even more work with sheetrock and fiberglass lay ahead.