Reflections and Updates from Team Detroit

From Karma:

"On April 2, a group of Jesse Remington students left at 2:30am towards the beautiful city of Detroit. When arriving we had the opportunity to attend the church service at Redeemer Presbyterian church, the “home base” for our stay. We were able to enjoy communion during the service. After the service we met people who congratulated the team and thanked us for the work put into the church last year. This year we will have the privilege to work alongside Redeemer finishing up some of the projects from last year along with some new projects. After the service we were able to enjoy touring of the Detroit riverwalk. We then had a fun time going grocery shopping and preparing for the week to come. After dinner we enjoyed a peaceful time of worship led by Emma Cross, Karma Hignett, and Chloe Fredrickson. We had a splendid time building our friendships and community."

From Carter:

"Today, we were working with Central Detroit Christian, which is a ministry that is bringing the light of Christ to an extremely dark community. One of the projects that they are doing to share the love of Christ is renovating numerous vacant homes around the city to provide affordable housing for those who need it most. In order to help them with their major renovation project we are cleaning the backyard of a couple of the rundown vacant homes, which they plan on fully renovating later on, the full renovations of each house takes on average nine to twelve months. There was tons of trash everywhere in the yards and mounds of dirt, glass, small trees, and brush. We were cleaning out the backyards by removing all of the junk and the small trees that were in the way. We were then bringing all of the junk and sticks to a dumpster to be properly disposed of. There was all sorts of stuff from car parts to baby dolls to some crawling insect friends, however after five hours of work we successfully completed two full lots, one of them was already half done by another group, and the other we did from start to finish. Finally we started to work on a third lot which we plan to finish tomorrow which will likely take the most time of all the lots considering it has a whole garage full of junk along with the backyard!"

From Kevin:

"Today , we were working with Central Detroit Christian. They first gave us an introduction to their ministry and how getting out of poverty is not as easy as just getting a job. He explained to us about the struggle of the poor and the power of God.

It is difficult for the poor to go step by step. But with the sacrifice of Jesus and the grace of God, the poor were able to move forward. After hearing his speech, I thanked God. I was born into a blessed family and met good friends and a good family. And I was able to get a good education. Next we did the same thing as yesterday. For others, we cut down trees, carry them to trash cans, pick up trash, and sweep leaves. Next we went to a Christian school to help the children. Me and Carter helped with the 4th grade. They were in science class. I did an experiment with Coke and Mentos. After that, I read a book to the kids, and Carter played with them. Before I took care of my kids, I really hated them. However, after taking care of the children, I seem to have come to like them a little bit. I think God gave me time to change my negative perspective."

From Chloe:

"Hi! So today our team and I worked continuing to fix up the backyard and the garage, then a smaller group of us headed over to the Central Detroit Christian Ministry building and worked with some kids! I first worked with a group of 5th graders and we played some basketball together, then we did some math. We played a hard math game that I still do not understand. After we worked on math, everyone was dismissed and as I went back to the group, the cutest little girls came over and played with me. There were twins that were about 4 or 5 and one older sister who was about 6 or 7. They braided mine, Mandie, Emma, Annika's hair which made my day! Spending a short (but so amazing) period of time with them has truly been one of my favorite moments on this mission trip so far. It was so cool, because God was able to just love on all the kids through me, and it just demonstrated His goodness so much. Being in Detroit so far has had such an impact on me in a way of gratitude and what the Lord’s calling on my life is. I can’t wait to see what He is gonna continue to do."