Day 6 - Booth Industries, St. Francis Table and Streetwalk

Jake and Aaron are our bloggers for today. Here is their report:

Goooood Tuesday everyone. Jake here doin ze blog entry. Today we woke up to a good start. We headed out to the other side of the city to help Booth Ministries (in partnership with Salvation Army) assemble various things. They work with mentally disabled adults so they can have a job to do and earn some extra cash and give them a "purpose" to their day. It was very relaxing and good to just talk to some of those people. We then went to eat a handful of food at the Somali restaurant. And yes, I do literally mean "hand"-ful. We had to eat with just our right hand, no utensils. Right hand = eating hand, left hand = "not" eating hand....yeaaa....um so that food was very good. Some others had trouble but we worked through it. =) (Mr. Savidge: We were encouraged to eat in the traditional Somali way, which also meant that the women do not speak unless spoken to by a male. Jake, Josh, Aaron and I did our best not to talk to our ladies for as long as possible to see if they would actually keep silent. They were not amused.)

After THAT we went on over to St. Francis' Table to help serve, prepare, etc. food for their restaurant for the homeless/poor. They must pay $2 to get in, then after that they are seated and one of our volunteer servers (today it was Becca, Carlie, Ashlee, Morgan and Josh) went to take their order. Mr. and Mrs. Savidge helped plate the food to be taken out while Aaron and myself bused tables and washed the dishes.

Finally, we went on a very interesting night walk. Here's what happened: We all were seated in the gym. Holly, a guide here, put into our minds a situation. We were the person in this story, therefore we were in this "situation". Its our first night on the streets. We just ran away from an abusive home, took the first train to Toronto and have $2 on our person and no food, shelter or any form of entertainment. We're completely alone. Our team split up into two smaller groups and then walked the streets of Toronto. We had to literally get something to eat (that was wise) with our $2 and then, with our guide, tell him where we would sleep, with him giving us advice if that would be good or not if we were to sleep there. At the end, we took the subway and street car back to the church for debriefing. Now I'm here typing our day!! woo hoo. Mr. Savidge just knocked on our window from the street as he was coming back from parking the van and I jumped out of the couch. (Mr. Savidge: this just about made my day!!) I thought some guy was breaking in. Talk about a heart attack. Anyway. We'll talk to you guys tomorrow. Keep us in your prayers!!!

-JD