Mission Trip - Chicago

Our church, St. Mark's, allows our Middle School and High School students the opportunity to serve others as well as see some marvelous sights outside of our Lincoln community through work camp/mission trips. This year our church decided to see St. Louis, but two weeks prior to taking off our plans suddenly changed. The agency that allows our youth to participate made a mandatory age requirement of 15 years, which caused us to rethink this summer's trip. We (our church youth) received overwhelming love from last year's adventure to Chicago, that we decided to revisit them instead.

This year I joined Tyler much to his delight...not. Our first day we did some sight seeing in downtown Chicago. Tyler went with his buddies shopping and I visited Chicago landmarks. I figured I can go shopping anytime. What was Tyler thinking?

The Pier was a great place to take photos

and so was Millennium Park.

This fountain was so cool. The face changes every five minutes.

This huge Marilyn Monroe is a new to the area. I guess she's caused quite a stir and is a bit controversial.

I'm thinking this might be the reason why? You know I just had to look! ;)

Then we volunteered at several places in the Chicago area. This Head Start Center was so much fun. We broke into 4 groups at this children's agency. We cleaned out an office, took care of the outdoor area (mowed and picked up trash), cleaned and organized the kitchen and of course, played with the kids.

The lady in the white shoes runs the front desk and hasn't ever missed a day of work. The director had us guess her age. She's 106 years young and still goes to work (in a non-air conditioned building). Very inspirational!

The following day we headed to the 2nd biggest homeless shelter in downtown Chicago.

It provides beds to 200 men and about 50 women.

We sorted, folded and stacked over 4,000 bed linens.

So, of course, this scrapbooking layout will be titled "Holy Sheet".

We also took the fastest elevator in the Northern hemisphere to the top of the Hancock building. 100 floors in 40 seconds! Impressive!

We also enjoyed Chicago style pizza! Yum!

We watched the White Sox play the Detroit Tigers. Sox win!

Lastly, we spent the day at Six Flags!

A great trip and such a worthwhile experience despite the lack of showering.

Six days and one shower! Delightful!