Greetings from Brooklyn

Greetings from Brooklyn, The past couple of days have been both extremely hard and incredibly rewarding here in Brooklyn. I and eleven other of my friends from a campus ministry at University of North Georgia, come from a small Georgia town. We are also joined by 4 other college students from across the nation. We left Dahlonega not knowing what to expect. After a two day, fourteen and a half hour road trip, we arrived in Brooklyn. This was the first time in New York City for many of us. The skyline and the number of cars on one road took our breath away.

We were met at the church we are staying at by our team leaders, Cindy and Jim, and we were eventually joined by Rev. Daniel Delgado, our ministry partner. Rev Delgado, or Rev as everyone around here calls him, is the head man of Third Day Missions.

Third Day Missions was one of the many organizations that was (and still is) in Staten Island after Super Storm Sandy hit the northeast. All 18 of us were taken aback when Rev told us that the estimated time to get Statin Island and its surrounding areas back to original condition would be between 7 and 10 years. Rev informed us that we would be cleaning up a local synagogue. I for one was caught off guard by this. I was not prepared for our mission trip to be crossing paths with a different religion. I had to do some praying about this….

We arrived at the synagogue bright and early Monday morning. We were met by Rabbi Levi, the rabbi of the Jewish Synagogue of Brighten Beach. He gave us a tour of the lower floor of the building. He took us through the hallways, the meeting areas, and the class rooms. We saw the effects the water from Sandy left. In most places the water level was almost four feet high, while in other areas the water level reached six to eight feet. The water sat in the building for five days before they were able to get pumps in to clear out the water. (The “dry” wall was still moist when we took it down. This is FOUR months later). The work on Monday was slow going but much was accomplished in a day’s work. We washed mold off all of the walls, the rest of the dry wall was taken down, boilers were tuned on for the first time since October, and the water was turned on for the first time.

Tuesday was another adventure; the girls got the power tools and the boys were on cleaning duty!! The words “power tools” and “girls” always bring interesting stories. We finished the demolition and kept cleaning.
The rest of our day consisted of eating, praying, relaxing, and worshiping with each other. I feel the Lord has brought us all here together for a reason. He has a Christian Campus Ministry working on a Jewish Synagogue for a reason. What that reason is, I cannot say right now. He is building and uniting His body; that I do know. We are his hands and feet in a very predominate Jewish community. I am excited to see what the Lord has in store for us in the next week. This is an awesome and intriguing project the Lord has blessed us with and I am excited to see what He does with my friends and me.           In Christ, Meagan