Day 6: When Plans Change

Jed Monforton:

Today we were originally going to work at 2 different urban farms, but it was raining and kind of miserable out, so we did something else. We went to a place called Rippling Hope, and they normally do house renovations and things like that. Other groups were already assigned the house renovation and painting projects, so we built houses for cats. That sounds strange, but there are tons of ferrel cats around Detroit, and Rippling Hope also makes shelters and collects food for them. People who request a cat house are required to trap the cats to have them spayed or neutered to help reduce the population. We basically had the whole work day to build a cat house. We got into teams and built shelters. My groups shelter turned out very good. The rest of the day we just hung around the church we are staying at. In the evening, we played games and had a water fight with another youth group, Northville.

I had several highlights to my day: Finishing the cat shelter, playing a game called nine square, and the water fight. Screwing the last board for our cat house felt great, and it looked great. Nine square was good, and the water fight was a blast.

It was hard to say I saw or experienced God. It is cool to see direct affects, like at the homeless help place, but cat shelters aren’t really the same. I guess I saw God just through having fun with friends.

Building a cat shelter was something I had never done before. it was fun, and maybe it will directly affect some cats, who knows. But that was a new thing that I hadn’t done before.

Kelly Sigfrids:

When you think of serving, sometimes you might think it may be either things you know how to do or are comfortable doing or sometimes it might be new things you have no idea about. Each person comes to serve with different skillsets which brighten the world by all of our different gifts. 

We might even take our experiences and our judgements to try and decide what we think people need. But we really need to set aside our ideas of what we think people need and bring what we have to serve the "needs of the community" even if it is needs we may not understand. We know in many cities a well-known need is to feed people, sometimes known as the hungry or the homeless. And sometimes the need is rebuilding their homes. But today, we learned that in the rebuilding of Detroit, that some of the current needs are feeding the cats and the kittens that are feral in the community as well as providing them a warm and safe shelter. Who knew that was a need...surely not me! And there is a waiting list for book barns or neighborhood library boxes in communities that are working to grow stronger...by reading. I love books, so to me that was a really cool need that I wanted to get on board with filling! It is just as valuable of a need if you think about how reading is part of strengthening education in these communities...they want books to read and a place locally and nearby to get them. I think every block in America could use some kitten homes and neighborhood library exchange boxes. This is a great way to rebuild one block at a time!

I walk away with the excitement and goal of collecting books for this community to send back to them here in Detroit to fill their book boxes that are made and placed in these communities. You too can be a part of rebuilding neighborhoods in Detroit one book at a time. If you are interested in contributing, drop them off to Sam and we will make sure they make it back to Detroit.

"Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them....cats included!"

Matthew 6:26, Paraphrased

"Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me..even if it's making cat shelters and book boxes!" 

(Matthew 25:40, 45, Paraphrased)