Chicago 13-Follow us on Facebook!

Hey everyone, slight change of plans!  The GSM Chicago '13 team will be posting daily recaps and trip photos online at the Granger Student Ministries Facebook page.  Plus you'll be able to see "real-time" updates throughout the day as Facebook has the mobile access to keep everyone back home posted.

And you can of course leave comments of encouragement and support on the Facebook page and we'll pass those on to the team!

Here's a link to the GSM page! GSM on Facebook

Friday Recap

We began the day with breakfast and some devotions with the group and then headed out to the work sites and got to work. We split up in morning. A few groups went to Bright Hope to finish up the work we started Wednesday, while the rest of the group went back to the Willow Creek garden that we were at Thursday. The Bright Hope group spent some time organiing and putting thing in their rightful places, then met up with everyone else for lunch and we finished out the day together at the garden. One group spent the day weeding and harvesting cabbage. Another group finished planting the rest of the garden then laid hay over the plants to keep the ground cool and the plants moist. A third group spent the day cutting down overhanging branches and clearing brush in order to expand the garden in the future. The team worked hard today and Steve had nothing but compliments to give at the end of the day. We cleaned up for dinner, had Chick-fil-a (shout out to the Wonderly's). We headed out for a team fun night playing WHIRLY BALL!!!!!! For those of you who don't know what that is, it's an awesome combination of bumper cars, lacrosse, and basketball. We had an amazing time and thoroughly exhausted, we headed back to the hotel for some much needed sleep. The Chicago '12 team is headed into the city today...more updates to come!!

Thursday Recap

You know what's AWESOME when EVERYONE is doing it?! SWEATING!! Yes, you read that right! The Chicago 2012 team got down and dirty and sweaty yesterday at our work project. We got up bright and early, ate breakfast, and headed off to Willow Creek Church's garden on their campus. Our team got to meet Steve, who heads up the garden at Willow, and see his heart and overflowing passion for this ministry. He told us the story of how the garden came to be, how God was working through both him and Willow to plant this ministry. Steve gave us some direction for the day, and we dug right in...literally! Our team spent the entire morning and the majority of the afternoon with shovels and rakes tilling up about 15,000 square feet of their garden. The garden continues to grow, almost doubling in size every year! I cannot even begin to express to you family and friends the amount of hard work, NON-STOP encouragement, and excellence that the team showed the entire day. The Christ-like attitudes of every student and leader on this team are such an inspiration! We worked hard all day, laughing together, singing together, loving together, and serving together...it doesn't get much better than that. When we first got to Willow's garden, Steve said something that really stuck out to us. He told us how when he gets to heaven, he wants to have nothing left. He wants God to say to him that He's so proud of him for giving all of himself. I'm not sure if you are aware, but the Chicago 2012 team verse for the week is Luke 10:27, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind. And love your neighbor as yourself." We are striving daily to live this out by giving God EVERY part of us. Im confident that this team gave everything we had yesterday as we served with Willow in their garden. God is so good and is working in and through each one of us, that is evident! To end our day, we had dinner at the mall food court with a little free time to walk around, we debriefed at the park with some more AWESOME worship, and headed back to the hotel. Family and friends, thank you so much for all of your prayers and support back home, we can really feel it! We LOVE reading your comments, too! We're off to our work project for today...more stories to come soon. Have a blessed day!

Wednesday Recap

We kicked off the day with devotions and then headed over to Bright Hope Ministries. Bright Hope is a non-profit organization that works with contacts in nine countries to provide whatever needs are brought to their attention. Their main focus is to bring hope to families that live off of less than one dollar a day.  When we arrived, we got a tour of their facility and an explanation of who they are and why what we were going to do was important. We split up into four groups and headed off to our specific projects.  Our group spent the day organizing and sorting a variety of donations into their specific categories. This enabled Bright Hope to send care packages to the countries. Some of us took inventory of the items in the warehouse in order to donate the necessary items to other organizations. We also worked outside to make their landscape even more beautiful by pulling weeds and adding mulch to the flowerbeds. Our team worked so efficiently that by the end of the day, our students and leaders began cleaning the facility. Bright Hope is an inspiring organization and we can't wait to go back on Friday! We came back to the hotel, cleaned up, hung out for a bit, and headed to the mall for dinner. We kicked off team debrief at Madison Meadow Park with some awesome acoustic worship. Then we had chance to share some stories from the day with the team. Back at the hotel we had some free time, including an awesome jam session with Brandon and Riley. Be sure to listen for the one-hit-wonder, "World's Finest Chocolate, How Ya Doin' Today?"  We headed to bed soon after because tomorrow's too good to waste tonight!!

Day One: Tuesday Update

Well Chicago 2012 is in full swing!! We kicked off our trip right at home by helping Chris Whitmire and her team unload over 6 TONS of furniture for the Early Learning Center at GCC. Chris said our team was a huge blessing and along with her team we were able to crank out all those boxes of furniture in just 45 minutes! Soon after that, we packed up the bus and were Chicago bound!  Two hours later we had parked in downtown Chicago and started making HUNDREDS of PB&J sandwiches to pass out to the homeless around the city. We divided into our groups and spread out to our designated streets. We spent the majority of the afternoon out there with the people who are homeless, listening to their stories, hearing about their lives, and praying with those who wanted it. The people of Chicago had such an impact on us and it was neat to hear the different stories from the group later that evening. One leader pointed out a simple but bold statement that "we are all homeless until we know the love of Christ." It was powerful to see that we all have a connection to those we served throughout the city.  Our team challenge this week was inspired by a man named Chino (who we met yesterday in Chicago) who, every single morning before he even gets out of bed, drops to his knees and prays for his day. We were so moved by his faith that we decided to make it our daily challenge on this trip to spend a minute with God every morning before we start our day.  After our day in the city, we headed back to the hotel, cleaned up for dinner, spent some time debriefing, and had some free time with our team.  We're off to a GREAT start, and are ready to see what God has in store for us this week! Be sure to follow all of our pictures posted on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Also, we LOVE your comments and will be reading them to the team durning debrief :) 

Quick update!

Hey everyone just wanted to get a quick post up! The trip is going great and the team is serving like crazy! We had some Internet issues at the hotel last night so well get a full day 1 recap up soon!! You can also follow along on Facebook (Granger Student Ministries) or Twitter (@gsmlive) or on Instagram (gsmlive) for little snippets into our days! Thanks for the comments so far- the team loves the encouragement from home!

Photo's from Day 1

Hey all! Jeff Myers here. I'm going to try something a little different this year and share a link to the public photo album on the GSM Facebook page. Hope this allows everyone to see the pic's with no problems. If not, just let us know and we'll try a different solution. Be sure to become a fan on Facebook to get the latest GSM updates. Enjoy! Day 1 Photo Album on Facebook

CHICAGO 12 Coming Soon...

Hey everybody this is the team blog for the GSM CHICAGO 12 mission team!  We're so excited to be taking off on our trip in just a few short days!  We'll be posting daily recaps of our trip as well as photo galleries so you can get a glimpse of all that God is doing through this team!  We'd also encourage you to leave comments on the blog posts that we'll share with the team during evening debrief!

SATURDAY RECAP!

Last workday today and the team got after it! We challenged the team to leave it all out there on the work projects so they could leave with no regrets on how hard they had worked and they rose to that challenge!

Today the team helped clean the whole camp and prepare it for the next week of camp! The team helped clean everything top to bottom and the camp staff was amazed at how clean the camp was. (apparently there is a group of students who enjoys cleaning bathrooms-just some helpful info for all you parents, it just may be your kid!) the team also helped finish several mulching projects, varnishing projects, woodworking projects and also helped crank out a large mailing for Riverwoods!

After getting all cleaned up we headed downtown for some Giordanos Pizza! We also went up the Willis (sears) Tower Skydeck and had an opportunity to look out over the city that we've spent the last 5 days serving! From the sky deck we were able to see all the places we had prayed over and fed the homeless. It was a cool experience and the team enjoyed some great food and great time together.

Tomorrow were off to church at Willow Creek which is sure to be an eye-opening experience for many and after some time doing an overall trip debrief well begin the treck back home! Were estimating an arrival of 7 pm, but well update the twitter (@gsmlive) and Facebook (Granger Student Ministries) pages if were early/late!

Photo's from Day 4

Here are some shots from our work site today. There's sooo many pictures of Whirly-Ball that I'll have to look through those another day. Enjoy!

FRIDAY RECAP!

Hey ya'll! Nicole again, today we continued to work at Riverwood, and we received a list of brand new projects. As soon as we got there we were split up into our small groups (hotel rooms) and given our tasks. Some groups continued to do LOTS of weeding in different areas again, which were spotless when they were finished. Others mulched around the campus, and there was also a lot of cleaning up done. The groups that cut the wood yesterday were the ones who spent most of the day sanding it. After that, a few groups varnished the wood, and finally when I asked Brinn what her group did she said "we made the wood shiny," I knew I couldn't put it any better. One group was able to start building a wall to help protect the amphitheater in the future. Finally, my group cleaned all the grassy areas of rocks and sticks and finished by clearing a part of the woods where a team building activity for the kids would be.

About half way through the day I headed back to get the supplies we needed for our new projects and I had the privilege of walking past most groups as they were working. Never (not an exaggeration) did I ever see anyone standing around or even taking much of a break. I have never been more proud of our team than I was when I saw them working today. We knew before we all started we had a ton to do today, and that we also had another list of things to do tomorrow IF we finished our work today. No one on our team thought that 'if' was an option, not finishing never crossed their minds. As we were getting on the bus, Johnny told us how proud he was because everyone absolutely killed it today! I know the Riverwood directors were shocked by how much was accomplished! Now sitting on the bus, as I'm writing this everyone is sharing stories of what their group did today to other groups. I love that even though most people are split up during the day, we always come back together in the end remembering we are one phenomenal team! Seriously these kids and leaders are incredible! Now we are headed back to the hotel to clean up before heading off to the food court for dinner, then... Team fun night!! But it's a surprise, so you will hear all about it tomorrow! :)

Thursday Recap

Hey everyone back home! Nicole here, and today we kind of switched gears and headed into our first work day with tons of excitement. This year we are partnering with an organization called Riverwood, which is a camp for kids and teens who live in government owned and subsidized housing. The awesome thing is everyone is able to go to this camp entirely for free! The camp holds kids all the way from elementary ages to high schoolers. So after hearing a little bit about the camp and their vision from one of their directors, Dennis, we split up and jumped right into working. Different projects were assigned, which ranged from pulling weeds, mulching, planting and re-planting trees, clearing out fields, cleaning trash up along the shoreline of the lake and cutting/sanding wood, (which will be used for future bunks for campers.) I had the task of working with my team to first dig up some trees and pull some weeds, then switched to re-planting the trees we pulled. While doing this my group had some amazing conversations about our day in the city yesterday and talked about some other ways we have been impacted on this trip, of course while still very hard at work.
At debrief we heard some stories about what other groups saw while working today. There were some really awesome ones that I want to share with you all back home. Tuff was in charge of the boys in the wood shop, and they shared about how when they were all doing different things, it looked like chaos but within the chaos there was organization when they thought about the end product. They compared it to our relationship with Jesus, how when everything looks like chaos to us, all Jesus sees is organization. We heard other stories about how without teamwork, the task at hand would not have been able to be accomplished. In all, our amazing students shared some valuable things they learned today, all while sweating plenty from working so hard.
The rest of the night was spent with some team bonding time in the hotel. It's amazing how much fun this team is having while pretty much doing anything! Tomorrow we are back at Riverwood to start a whole new list of work projects! Bring it on! :)

Photos from Day 3

Here's today's photos everyone! Enjoy!

Thursday Debrief Notes

What are things you saw today:

• Teamwork - "if you only had one person doing all the jobs it would have taken forever!"
• "We wouldn't give up and kept going!"
• Little kids were walking by as a group were picking up sticks and one little girl said, "What are they doing?" and another little girl said "I think they're helping nature!"
• Team bonding while digging holes.
• Flexibility
• "We basically mowed the lawn with our fingers" (They were weeding a huge area)
• Helping each other - people helping each other helping carry things that were too heavy for just one person.
• "We saw something messy being made pretty while varnishing wood that will soon be built into beds."
• Our team was told we got done "a full weeks worth of work done in an hour and a half"
• Beauty in the chaos

DC's Shot's from Day 2

Here's DC's shots from yesterday. Enjoy!!!

Photo's of Day 2

Hey All,
Here's all the photo's from Day 2. DC will probably be along tomorrow with even more...and if he doesn't, then I guess that makes me a liar. Umm, it's late. Anyway, here ya go!

WEDNESDAY WAS AWESOME!

As you can see from the debrief notes below, today was an awesome, packed day! Today we hit downtown Chicago again and this time we came with loads of sack lunches to pass out to the homeless. It was awesome to see each and every student step out of their comfort zone and walk up to a homeless person and offer them food, ask their name and offer to pray for them. Many of our groups entered into lengthy conversations and spent some time laughing with, listening to and caring for these people.

Students encountered very different reactions and it was awesome to hear all the stories of how no matter how they responded the students continued to encourage and show the love of Jesus to everybody they encountered. Lots of great stories and memories from the day!

Tomorrow we shift gears and jump into some physical work at Riverwoods Christian Center. Should be a great day!

Wednesday Night Debrief Notes

Notable names & quote from homeless people we had a chance to feed today at #GSMChicago...

Scooter - "You guys are right on time",

Isaiah - he'd been on the streets for 70 years.

Lady #1 - "God is something that the government made up."

Jerry - when asked if we could pray for him - "no, i'm a sinner"

Guy #1 - "anybody need any help come find me i'll help ya"

Guy #2 - when asked about his family - "no, my family gave up on me a long time ago"

Jimmy - when asked his name - "i'm a nobody"

David - can we pray for you - he lost his job, etc..... (this conversation started a 30 minute discussion and a sidewalk traffic jam as our students engaged the conversation

Reggie - was in a band at one time - didn't really want to make eye contact with the group and as soon as he started talking about his music he started smiling and his eyes lit up.

Joe - didn't ask for prayer for himself but only asked for prayer for others.

Lady #2 - shocked that people would come from other places to help and she is always on the streets and never thought about helping anyone.

Shorty - he didn't want to talk to anyone but he wanted prayer and he also prayed too.

Robert - he's been in and out of work telling stories

Napoleon - Played the harmonica - (When our kids applauded he lit up and you could see the sheer joy on his face!)

R

Ivan - homeless guy who'd been going to cambridge house and had been there 13 months, he's now out of the shelter, and he's now helping out the place that helped him get back on his feet.

Things that the group noticed:

-Had no family in chicago...they were alone.

Things that weren't expected:

-Awkward responses that they didn't expect from people.

-a lady that started praying with the whole group during "popcorn prayer" and we were there to pray for her.

Photo's of Day 1

Hey All,
Here are the photo's from tuesday, as promised. What an awesome day!

DAY 1 IS IN THE BOOKS!

Hard to believe that it was just this morning we were loading up at the church and heading into Chicago! We hit the ground running and haven't looked back yet! First thing right out of the gate we did was hit the city to do our Prayer Walk. What that basically means is our team split up into 5 smaller groups and physically walked, put their hands on and prayed for the people of every building throughout a HUGE section of downtown. For real, it was HUGE! Anyone familiar with Chicago it was from Michigan Avenue all the way West to Wacker Drive and from Congress Pkwy all the way North to the river! You'll be able to see pictures uploaded soon as the team prayed for the people that live there, work there, shop there, go to school there and on and on. It was a PHENOMENAL way to start the trip by praying over the city.

In our debrief time it was cool to hear all the stories of the experience the team had throughout the prayer walk but one of the coolest parts was hearing how students were feeling "nudges" from God and responding. Students stepped out and talked to some of the homeless and prayed for them, they talked with people who asked what they were doing and one group even decided to randomly but very sincerely compliment people they walked pass on the street!

We had some team time in the evening to hit the pool and a big group played a game called "Noun" which I've heard is something similar to charades! A great way to relax after an amazing first day!

Keep praying for the team, keep leaving comments on the blog as the team loves hearing from all of you and stay tuned for more updates and follow along on Facebook for real-time updates here or simply search for Granger Student Ministries when on Facebook.

And finally to clarify the hotel situation, we got a last minute phone call (aka this afternoon) that the hotel system had cancelled our reservation and they didn't have any rooms...But they've put us up in another hotel and are covering any extra costs and we're just a few minutes from where we were planning to be. So all is well, team did a great job being flexible and is by now fast asleep getting ready for an awesome day tomorrow!