Day 37--BBQ Time!

Today we had another excellent outreach, as usual on Saturdays. City on a Hill hosted a huge barbecue fair in the parking lot, featuring live music, tons of food, and activities for all ages. Being conveniently around, we had been roped into helping. Before actually getting ready for the outreach, we had breakfast together on a patio behind the part of the building where we live. It was a great and relaxing way to start the epic day; great fellowship and impromptu worship music as Jack brought his guitar.

After breakfast we went down to the ground floor where the preparations for the event were well underway. Everyone was signing up for various volunteer positions; this was made more complicated by the fact that the Summer in the City students were manning a prayer booth in shifts, trading off jobs with the people we replaced at the booth. I signed up for groundskeeping--keeping the tanks of cold water full and the garbage cans empty. I didn't expect that this project would involve working with people, particularly kids, so much; though I welcome how it's been stretching me, it was nice to do something less personal for once.

So, most of the four-hour carnival consisted of me walking around, checking garbage cans and water coolers. It was a hot day, so the job was pretty draining, especially with carrying heavy garbage bags and five-gallon tanks. I did get to see the whole fair quite a few times, which was pretty cool. During my 45-minute prayer booth shift not too much happened, except a woman named Tasha stayed for a while and we just talked. She was pretty nice and shared some prayer requests with us. Apparently a later shift talked to a guy about life for over an hour, which I hope to hear more about for my record-keeping duties. I also got to rest while filling in on security duty for a while. This involved sitting at the entrance and greeting/directing people as they came in--not keeping out the riff-raff, as I joked. Only project friends signed up for security, so I got to hang out with them for 15 or so minutes.

It was a very busy carnival, with face painting, gospel bracelets, kids' games, board games, ball games, ridiculous amounts of food, and a fire truck. But the focus of the whole thing was the big tent in the middle, where a group called the Captive Project was doing live music, a mixture of rap, gospel, and contemporary worship music. It was all about God; they did powerful, original Christian music interspersed with a presentation of the gospel and talks about what it means to be a Christian. It was glad that they were turned up loud enough to be heard from pretty much anywhere in the fair; they were really gifted at proclaiming the gospel and I'll be praying that people come to know Christ because of it.

The fair ended at 5:00, after which we spent a while cleaning everything up. I was out picking up trash until 6, one of the last to return. I was exhausted, barely able to walk, and covered in salt from all the heat. One shower later, it was time for a chill evening of hanging out that hopefully has yet to happen. (I fear everyone is too tired) Praise God for His working today!

Composed ~8:45 PM, Saturday, July 17th