The breakfast crew just headed downstairs, and I just read the scripture from Dave's daily thing, I saiah chapter 58. And my mouth tastes nasty so i'm going to brush that. The scripture... it's all about Israel, and how they were always trying to do their own thing, always beating themselves and doing all this useless stuff, when all that God wants, as far as religious stuff goes, is to get down with the homeless and help them out. What do they say in the book of James, pure and faultless religion is caring for the orphans and widows, i believe it says? And the homeless, they are the same idea, if you think about it - they sure didn't ask for their situation, neither did the orphans + widows.

Dude today was strangesse. This morning two guys, two subordinates to Dave or something, some guys from around the area, came + spoke; the one gave his testimony about how he was totally called to leave all he had and follow Christ. The other was this fired-up crazyhead guy who really wanted us to get out there and look for miracles today. I dunno if i saw any. I think what i saw was ordinary-type things. We (the Drew men) had an interesting conversation later on, about the stuff he'd said.

Well after fruit + muffins for breakfast, we vanned it on down to the Bowrey Street mission, in Manhattan, where we sorta split into 2 and worked back and forth on two jobs. The guys who ran it were so fun. The one guy is new to the kitchen, and he'd flipped out when he saw the state of one of the main storage freezers. There was no order at all, no shelves, no anything, just disgruntled stacks, and ice that was like 5 to 7 inches deep in some places, fusing all these boxes and crates to the floor. No way. It was a mess. We cleaned house. We took inventory. We shelved, stacked, and dated all those boxes, we de-iced the floor and put the refridgeration unit back together. And the group downstairs folded clothes. Aisles of 'em, boxes and bags of 'em, sorted by shape, size, and type. It was good stuff. And the we ate their food and talked with some of the homeless-types who ate there. Such characters.

I'm so tired, it's 10:20 at night.

In the afternoon we set up a little "free soup" thing on the sidewalk of the park that they featured in Die Hard 3. I've never seen it. I do know that when they filmed it they made all the homeless people evacuate. They also put in a water fountain, temporarily.

Man, i'm getting a little scrubbly on the chin here.

So check it out, me and Pillen went into the park - at which point there was a decent light rain going on - and we come acfross these guys, forty years or thirty, just talking you know, and our job was to just talk with them and hang out and such, so we do, and this one guy was gool, he liked us, and this one guy was suspicious of us; i think we looked kinda suspicious though to him. And they sorta spoke only limited English, mostly Polish (and i only know the word for "lip" :P ) so i mean, the conversation was short and sweet. And we sorta scared this other dude off... :\ It was the strangest thing in the world, Pillen said he'd never seen it either... He quickly set down the soup he'd been eating and went off, mumbling that he'd had enough soup, and never looked back, leaving us standing in the rain, thinking like, "what the heck?" But there was this one dude Eddie from Puerto Rico who we prayed over, and we heard James tell us his story about how he got into that wheelchair of his. I'm not sure where the homeless people were, though. It was rainy, they weren't at the park like they usually were.

Maybe they were underground. The underground city of New York is probably bigger and deeper than New York City itselg. You look down certain drainage stuff, and down certain stairwells, and you look into the bowels of the earth, man, it's crazy. Underground New York City... the thought just gives me a grandiose feeling... That's sorta like chaustrophobia, but sorta like wanderlust, sort of like another city in itself. I dunno.

I hate cucumbers.

So we never really saw a big great move of God like the second guy that morning had described it. I was like he expected that the burden of God's working was on us, us totally, and we were supposed to be some group of action heroes, channels of God's mighty power, and by golly if we didn't reap a great harvest it was our fault for lack of faith. I mean come on. That conversation we had tonight about him, turned to one about the character of God, and we went all over free-will vs. predestination. I think the Free-wills and the Calvinists came to some sort of understanding, amazingly.. they ended up saying the same things about God either way. Which is curiously true of all orthodox Christianity, though for whatever reason, denomonations nitpick and divide. And you know, realworld experience is all it takes to see how God really works. None of this nose-in-the-books crap.

Then we got pizza; 7 (or 8?) pizzas for like 75 dollars... a SWEET deal for 7 or 8 larges in New York City. We think the mafia must have been involved. Then it was games all night - Couch of Power was a thrill ride, then Seulgi's celebrity game which was played 3 times was really cool. Oh we never got to play the Colors game! Or the State game! :D hehe...

I think i should see if i can do something with this scrub brush on my chin. I've never really done anything with it before except get rid of it. I feel so young.

Despite the fact that i feel as old as time.

Yo, me and Dan are gonna fix this family's computer. Actually Polonski says he's gonna help, cause he's more into the Windows scene than we are. Yecch, we saw the screen, it's like a '98 or an ME or something. I mean, what the deuce. All i know is, they have spyware and registry bloating and probably corrupted memory, they probably need their useless files erased and their drive defragged. And holy crap, i bet they use AOL. which means we can't get them Opera if we wanted to. I dunno. It's like dealing with Amanda Agazio, seriously. They hate their computer, but i mean, they've got a 98, and they don't take care of it, and we don't have a lot of time to help them out. I'm not mad at the family, or Amanda for that matter.

Just my own transient relevance.

aah, roommate bonding :)

gnight