We made it! It was a long day, but day one of the 2015 Chicago Mission Trip was a success. We all made it safely down to Chicago as did our equipment. We enjoyed a day together laughing and visiting and getting to know each other better as we work to become a unified team.
This morning we left Rice Lake around 8:45am and had lunch at Panera in the Madison area. We arrived at our host homes and unloaded our luggage and then took a bus and then a train downtown Chicago for supper at the Taste of Chicago event. It was a long day and a late night, but it seems the team had a fun day bonding today. This is important work to help us be most effective in putting on the VBS program because being unified and growing to love one another is essential to a ministry like VBS.
Tomorrow (Saturday), we will have breakfast at a restaurant in the Portage Park neighborhood of Chicago where we will be doing the VBS. We plan to eat breakfast each morning at Shilas in order to connect with the owners/employees as we work to intentionally build more bridges between our partner church (Christ Our Savior Church) and their local community. After breakfast, we will canvas the neighborhood inviting children to the VBS program and help with an outreach event COSC is putting on. In addition, we will be decorating and setting up for the VBS program. Thanks for your prayers!