Dear KCC,
It’s been an awesome trip in Detroit so far. The first thing
I noticed is that it’s so different from what I expected. Whenever I told
people about going to Detroit, they’d always tell me to bring a flak jacket,
and not to get into any drug deals. However, the city is really not that
different from Seattle. Of course, there are tons of abandoned buildings, and
some very low quality houses, but the people here represent a much better
community than what I’ve seen in Kent. No matter who you walk past when going
down the street, they will say hi to you, and ask how your day is. Even the
guys who drive the fancy cars, and blast rap music, will give you a friendly
wave as they cruise by. The church that we’re a part of is also incredibly
different. The sermon we went to was nearly three hours long, and the pastor
was very passionate about what he had to say. One of the coolest things is that
at one point the assistant pastor was reading through prayer requests, and one
of them was to pray for a woman who was in the hospital with cancer. After he
read it, however, one of the staff members informed him that the woman had
passed away just two days ago. The man took a second to pause, but quickly
reassured us that she was a brave and happy woman, and when he visited her the
week before, she said she wasn’t afraid of death, and was very cheerful. What
could’ve been a disaster was quickly turned into something incredible. Also at
the church we cleaned windows, cleaned the chapel pews and floor, and stained
an entire wooden ramp, which I was a part of and now looks great. We also got
to work with a group of kids at the church Tuesday through Thursday, at an
event called KSA. This is kind of like VBS, but instead it’s more of a short
summer day care. A lot of the high schoolers were able to get really close to
the kids here, after going to a park, going skating, and going to a community
garden.
Other than the church, we’ve been working a great house
called the Detroit Hope House. This house is a safe haven for all nearby kids
to come and play, and we’ve volunteered there to help out. We’ve done multiple
projects for the Hope House and its staff members. The first one was we picked
up trash at a nearby park. We found some scary things in the park, like little
drug baggies, and many alcohol bottles, but after we left we feel the park will
be a much better place. We’ve also helped clear out a burnt down shed, which
was scary at first because we were handling big pieces of wood with nails
sticking every which way, but it went well, and we only had two (minor)
injuries. My favorite project is when a group of us went to a house down the
road in order to clean it up. We met the woman there, who was a nice and old
Russian lady named Nikolai. I wouldn’t call her crazy, but I would say she’s
very specific. She’s also a hoarder. When we first got to the house, you
literally could barely see her house or her garden because of all the brush in
the way, but after we finished you could see her entire, wonderful garden. We
also made paths for her out of sawdust, and just helped trim up outside of her
house. Today she even stopped by the church and brought up thank you cards for
Sarah and the crew who helped. She was so thankful for us, which I’m really
glad to see. After working at Nikolai’s, the boys took a little tour of GrossPointe, which is a town bordering Detroit full of rich people who are trying to
separate themselves from Detroit. My favorite thing this trip that doesn’t
involve working or helping was going to see a street in Detroit called the Heidelberg
Project. The entire street was filled with art, whether it was an entire fence
hung with old shoes, or it was a burnt down house that was used as a music
memorial. Even the streets had painted polka dots, and the sidewalk had a silly
face on each square. The artwork is such so hard to describe, and you have to
see it in person to see its beauty, but it really represents how even a
suffering, bankrupt city like Detroit can make something beautiful.
In conclusion, I’m really glad that the Mission Trip was to
Detroit this year. The downtown of the city is full of magnificent sky
scrapers, and the suburbs are filled with quaint houses, both used and
abandoned. However, the biggest thing for me is to be here to help these adults
and kids, and hopefully this city will return to its former glory.
Sincerely,
Jonah Hames
