Practicum in Detroit... an unfinished draft

I do believe I win the award for the most negligent blog-writer. The following has been in my "draft" file for... a long time. I apologize. I will get going on a much more consolidated version. Right now.

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Hang on to your hats, readers... this is going to be a long one. I'm going to attempt to tell you what Team Chile did on Practicum (a test-run at outreach on our own) in Detroit, MI a few weeks ago.

If you're looking for the condensed version, skip to the bottom.

FRIDAY -

On Friday, we packed some lunches, said goodbye to our friends at the RIC, and hit the road at 8am. I was the only person on our team who knew where we were going, and I had devised a little guessing game for my teammates for them to discover where we were going. There was a LOT of excitement in the van when our destination was revealed. On our way, we stopped at a rest stop to eat our lunches, and we found the greatest little special needs accessible playground.

We arrived in the afternoon at a parish/Catholic church/school in Highland Park that afternoon (reminded me a bit of Good Shepherd), met our hosts, Brother Paul and his dog, Brother Joshua, removed some air conditioning units, went grocery shopping, and settled in.

SATURDAY -

Our team had been assigned to work for Focus: Hope, a non-profit organization committed to fighting poverty and racism. We would be working with Focus: Hope from Saturday until Wednesday of that week, in whatever capacity they needed. That morning we met their volunteer coordinator, Bill, who told us our task for the morning was to walk a 4 mile loop around the neighborhood to distribute fliers for the upcoming fundraiser walk (taking place on the very same 4 mile loop the next day). With a box full of fliers and a few rolls of tape, we set out on our journey.

About halfway through, we met a mother and her 3 adult sons standing at a bus stop. We asked them where they were going, and they told us that they were on their way to their church to rehearse for their "musical" that was taking place that evening. As a fan of musicals, I was intrigued and wanted to know more. They invited us to attend, and with the rest of the details we told them we would meet them there.

That afternoon we picked up a nice cake to take with us, and we ventured to the other side of town to the "musical." Now, in my head, musicals have a plot and characters and whatnot. I'm not exactly sure what I was expecting, but it was probably somewhere along the lines of a "Godspell"-esque performance.