Bowery Mission NYC Thanksgiving Outreach 2010
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We’ve all returned from a great time in NYC and have gotten back to our
“normal” lives again! It was an action packed week.
Our ministry is entitled Relief Ministries and I believe we were able to provide
relief for the staff and students at the Bowery. Though the nature of what we do is
to provide relief work in all shapes and sizes, our main focus has been and always
will be discipleship, whether that is among our team, those we go and serve with, or
those that we are serving. This is the duty of every Christian.
I always tell our teams while we are planning our trips that whatever we are doing--
in this case preparing and serving food-- is never what the trip is really about. It is
ALWAYS about each individual’s relationship to Jesus and how He wants to
change us more into Him in all we do. As we each continue to foster our
relationship with the Lord, the natural thing to follow is service to Him.
The Bowery holds a special place in our hearts as we continue to build our
relationship together. While we are there, we have plenty of opportunity to
minister to the staff and students. This year was no exception. Many of the team
took time to listen to and pray with those in the house. As a team we have
devotions in the morning and the evening. Many times we were joined by house
members. The director of the Bowery, Tom, joined our group on Wednesday night
and provided the devotion and shared his heart with us. I was asked to teach three
chapel services before we departed. One of them was cancelled, but then I was
asked to do four more while there. Aaron, one of our team members, brought his
guitar so he was able to lead worship for our evening devotions and all of the chapel
services that I taught. Many of the house members commented about how blessed
they were by all of the above the week we were with them.
Now for some of the trip details! We started out doing some sight seeing on
Saturday after the team arrived and got settled in. Because of the warmer weather
this fall there were still leaves on the trees. Some of our party had never seen fall
leaves before so we took a long walk through Central Park. We ended up in China
Town and ate our dinner from the street carts.
Sunday morning we hit the ground running. I divided the team into two 5-person
crews and one 6-person crew. Mary Jo, Kevin and Brian each led a crew. The first
crew started at 6 AM. Each crew would work five hours, take seven hours off, then
come back and work five more hours and take seven more off. The next team
would begin its shift an hour before the previous shift ended, giving time for a
smooth transition. The teams worked from Sunday morning until about midnight
on Wednesday. We actually finished cooking the food Wednesday afternoon.
About 100 volunteers showed up Wednesday evening to help finish plucking
turkeys and bagging the food and then we did a massive cleaning. For the first
time in Bowery Thanksgiving history we didn’t have to stay up all night to finish
cooking!
The next morning things started moving at about 4 AM. We prepare a huge egg,
potato, bacon, and sausage breakfast for the first Thanksgiving seating at 8 AM
and invite the community to join the house. It was packed to overflowing and we
ran out of eggs towards the end, but everyone still got plenty to eat.
Thanksgiving dinners started at 10 AM and ran until 8 PM. There was a huge tent
with the chapel pews set up in it for a warm waiting space. There was a line down
the street and around the corner at times to get into the tent. The chapel had been
turned into a beautiful dining room. The people would be ushered from the tent
into the dining room where they would be served a full thanksgiving meal by one of
the many volunteers that had signed up in advance to help out.
During the dinner, Dennis (the Bowery chaplain) spoke to the people giving them
encouragement from the Word and offering to pray for anyone in need of more
personal attention. Our own Aaron grabbed his guitar and joined a local piano
player, and they took turns playing and singing worship songs throughout the day.
After dinner the guests were ushered through the coat line where everyone who
wanted a warm winter coat was given a brand new one on the way out the door.
Because of all the people in line, we squeezed in three extra sittings for a total of
1966 Thanksgiving meals served in house. We also sent out meals to 15 satellite
locations in all 5 boroughs of NYC and one in New Jersey and were able to feed
another 3023 for a total Thanksgiving meals served of 4989 meals!
The Bowery actually serves a full Thanksgiving meal for dinner every day for a
week. The dinners began on Monday evening and ran until the following Sunday.
Approximately 200 people from the community ate at each of these meals. On
Monday, Tuesday, Friday and Saturday, the Bowery Outreach team took full
Thanksgiving meals to Tompkins Square Park and also served about 200 people at
each of these outings.
While all of the prepping and Thanksgiving meal serving is going on, the Bowery
still provides breakfast, lunch and dinner daily for about 100 in the house, and
about 200 in the community.
On Friday our team was blessed to go to Chelsea Park with the Bowery Outreach
team for lunch. We took all the Thanksgiving fixings and were able to serve
another 385!
I’ll save you the math-- all told we were able to help prepare and serve over 10,500
meals and we even had some left over to freeze and use for future meals! This was
the largest year so far, Praise God!!
To do all of the above it took 311 large Butterball turkeys, 1 ton of white potatoes,
a little over 1 ton of sweet potatoes, 300 lbs of vegetables, over 100 gallons of
gravy, 21 lbs of cheese, over 20 cases of macaroni, tons of bread, onions, celery,
spices, 400 pies, etc. It is amazing to see God provide all of this year in and year
out!
There is a revolving door of men at the Bowery as they go through the program
and either drop out or finish and move on in their lives. There is no start date for
the program; it is continual in nature so some of the students are fresh off of the
street while others are close to finishing their six month program. There are also
men who are in missionary training and job searching who have already finished
the program. We never know what caliber of help we will get from the Bowery
students. This year we were extremely blessed by the men in the house. We
served alongside an amazing, hard working group. God is doing a tremendous
work in their lives as they are looking to Him to make lasting change, and mold
them into Christ’s likeness every day! Praise God for His goodness and for the
Bowery being faithful to His call on their lives to provide a program where these
men can turn their lives over to Him as they allow Him to make permanent change
that is impossible without God!
We had our fair share of issues this year. Five of our team came down with the
flu, and one of them went home early. Each of these members was out for at least
48 hours, some more. The Lord however was faithful as usual and what satan had
meant for evil, God turned into good!
We finished out our time as a team by going site seeing again. We rode the Staten
Island Ferry across and back at night to see the Statue of Liberty and city with all
the lights. It was cold but nice. We also went to Macy’s and got to see some
window displays and decorations. We even made a stop at Rockefeller Center. The
tree was up, but not lit and we looked on as the ice skaters skated below it. We
had dinner at Lombardi’s, one of the best pizza places in NYC, and everyone
enjoyed their time together. We finished the evening with a short team devotion
and then we shared our hearts and what God had been saying and doing in each of
lives during the week.
Many of our team truly surrendered to the Lord during the week and we saw great
change in a lot of the lives of those who did. It is awesome to see what God does
when we truly surrender to Him!
It was truly a great week and though the hours were long, I was sad to see it end.
Mary Jo and I are already planning our next visit, probably some time in
February. We will give Clyde a chance to take a much needed vacation! We are
hoping to add some other aspects to our time in the discipleship area. We are also
looking into ways to help the students in other practical and educational areas as
they each seek to better their lives and rejoin society. I will also be taking Calvary
Chapel’s 8th grade class to the Bowery in May for their school mission trip. And of
course we are already working on next year’s Thanksgiving outreach, all if the
Lord wills! Please keep all of this in your prayers!
To view some of the news articles published about Thanksgiving at the Bowery,
click here.
“normal” lives again! It was an action packed week.
Our ministry is entitled Relief Ministries and I believe we were able to provide
relief for the staff and students at the Bowery. Though the nature of what we do is
to provide relief work in all shapes and sizes, our main focus has been and always
will be discipleship, whether that is among our team, those we go and serve with, or
those that we are serving. This is the duty of every Christian.
I always tell our teams while we are planning our trips that whatever we are doing--
in this case preparing and serving food-- is never what the trip is really about. It is
ALWAYS about each individual’s relationship to Jesus and how He wants to
change us more into Him in all we do. As we each continue to foster our
relationship with the Lord, the natural thing to follow is service to Him.
The Bowery holds a special place in our hearts as we continue to build our
relationship together. While we are there, we have plenty of opportunity to
minister to the staff and students. This year was no exception. Many of the team
took time to listen to and pray with those in the house. As a team we have
devotions in the morning and the evening. Many times we were joined by house
members. The director of the Bowery, Tom, joined our group on Wednesday night
and provided the devotion and shared his heart with us. I was asked to teach three
chapel services before we departed. One of them was cancelled, but then I was
asked to do four more while there. Aaron, one of our team members, brought his
guitar so he was able to lead worship for our evening devotions and all of the chapel
services that I taught. Many of the house members commented about how blessed
they were by all of the above the week we were with them.
Now for some of the trip details! We started out doing some sight seeing on
Saturday after the team arrived and got settled in. Because of the warmer weather
this fall there were still leaves on the trees. Some of our party had never seen fall
leaves before so we took a long walk through Central Park. We ended up in China
Town and ate our dinner from the street carts.
Sunday morning we hit the ground running. I divided the team into two 5-person
crews and one 6-person crew. Mary Jo, Kevin and Brian each led a crew. The first
crew started at 6 AM. Each crew would work five hours, take seven hours off, then
come back and work five more hours and take seven more off. The next team
would begin its shift an hour before the previous shift ended, giving time for a
smooth transition. The teams worked from Sunday morning until about midnight
on Wednesday. We actually finished cooking the food Wednesday afternoon.
About 100 volunteers showed up Wednesday evening to help finish plucking
turkeys and bagging the food and then we did a massive cleaning. For the first
time in Bowery Thanksgiving history we didn’t have to stay up all night to finish
cooking!
The next morning things started moving at about 4 AM. We prepare a huge egg,
potato, bacon, and sausage breakfast for the first Thanksgiving seating at 8 AM
and invite the community to join the house. It was packed to overflowing and we
ran out of eggs towards the end, but everyone still got plenty to eat.
Thanksgiving dinners started at 10 AM and ran until 8 PM. There was a huge tent
with the chapel pews set up in it for a warm waiting space. There was a line down
the street and around the corner at times to get into the tent. The chapel had been
turned into a beautiful dining room. The people would be ushered from the tent
into the dining room where they would be served a full thanksgiving meal by one of
the many volunteers that had signed up in advance to help out.
During the dinner, Dennis (the Bowery chaplain) spoke to the people giving them
encouragement from the Word and offering to pray for anyone in need of more
personal attention. Our own Aaron grabbed his guitar and joined a local piano
player, and they took turns playing and singing worship songs throughout the day.
After dinner the guests were ushered through the coat line where everyone who
wanted a warm winter coat was given a brand new one on the way out the door.
Because of all the people in line, we squeezed in three extra sittings for a total of
1966 Thanksgiving meals served in house. We also sent out meals to 15 satellite
locations in all 5 boroughs of NYC and one in New Jersey and were able to feed
another 3023 for a total Thanksgiving meals served of 4989 meals!
The Bowery actually serves a full Thanksgiving meal for dinner every day for a
week. The dinners began on Monday evening and ran until the following Sunday.
Approximately 200 people from the community ate at each of these meals. On
Monday, Tuesday, Friday and Saturday, the Bowery Outreach team took full
Thanksgiving meals to Tompkins Square Park and also served about 200 people at
each of these outings.
While all of the prepping and Thanksgiving meal serving is going on, the Bowery
still provides breakfast, lunch and dinner daily for about 100 in the house, and
about 200 in the community.
On Friday our team was blessed to go to Chelsea Park with the Bowery Outreach
team for lunch. We took all the Thanksgiving fixings and were able to serve
another 385!
I’ll save you the math-- all told we were able to help prepare and serve over 10,500
meals and we even had some left over to freeze and use for future meals! This was
the largest year so far, Praise God!!
To do all of the above it took 311 large Butterball turkeys, 1 ton of white potatoes,
a little over 1 ton of sweet potatoes, 300 lbs of vegetables, over 100 gallons of
gravy, 21 lbs of cheese, over 20 cases of macaroni, tons of bread, onions, celery,
spices, 400 pies, etc. It is amazing to see God provide all of this year in and year
out!
There is a revolving door of men at the Bowery as they go through the program
and either drop out or finish and move on in their lives. There is no start date for
the program; it is continual in nature so some of the students are fresh off of the
street while others are close to finishing their six month program. There are also
men who are in missionary training and job searching who have already finished
the program. We never know what caliber of help we will get from the Bowery
students. This year we were extremely blessed by the men in the house. We
served alongside an amazing, hard working group. God is doing a tremendous
work in their lives as they are looking to Him to make lasting change, and mold
them into Christ’s likeness every day! Praise God for His goodness and for the
Bowery being faithful to His call on their lives to provide a program where these
men can turn their lives over to Him as they allow Him to make permanent change
that is impossible without God!
We had our fair share of issues this year. Five of our team came down with the
flu, and one of them went home early. Each of these members was out for at least
48 hours, some more. The Lord however was faithful as usual and what satan had
meant for evil, God turned into good!
We finished out our time as a team by going site seeing again. We rode the Staten
Island Ferry across and back at night to see the Statue of Liberty and city with all
the lights. It was cold but nice. We also went to Macy’s and got to see some
window displays and decorations. We even made a stop at Rockefeller Center. The
tree was up, but not lit and we looked on as the ice skaters skated below it. We
had dinner at Lombardi’s, one of the best pizza places in NYC, and everyone
enjoyed their time together. We finished the evening with a short team devotion
and then we shared our hearts and what God had been saying and doing in each of
lives during the week.
Many of our team truly surrendered to the Lord during the week and we saw great
change in a lot of the lives of those who did. It is awesome to see what God does
when we truly surrender to Him!
It was truly a great week and though the hours were long, I was sad to see it end.
Mary Jo and I are already planning our next visit, probably some time in
February. We will give Clyde a chance to take a much needed vacation! We are
hoping to add some other aspects to our time in the discipleship area. We are also
looking into ways to help the students in other practical and educational areas as
they each seek to better their lives and rejoin society. I will also be taking Calvary
Chapel’s 8th grade class to the Bowery in May for their school mission trip. And of
course we are already working on next year’s Thanksgiving outreach, all if the
Lord wills! Please keep all of this in your prayers!
To view some of the news articles published about Thanksgiving at the Bowery,
click here.
and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the
darkness, and your night will become like the noonday. Isaiah 58:10
darkness, and your night will become like the noonday. Isaiah 58:10
