Community

I think one thing that we truly experienced while we were in Kensington was the aspect of community.
For the majority of the trip, there were 11 people living in one house, with one bathroom. By the time we left Kensington, there were a total of 16 people in that house. There were literally sleeping bags everywhere on the floors in the rooms. While we were definitely crowded in, there were a few key things that brought the whole experience together; go with the flow and live life together.

Go with the flow:
Everyday was unstructured and an adventure. We typically split the day up into two "shifts," one before lunch and one after lunch. Everyday we could expect that for one of those time slots we would be working on the aquaponics farm, however the other slot was usually used to help out another branch or area that the Simple Way pours into. Everyday we were "playing it by ear" or just seeing how things were going in order to choose our destination and the team had to be very flexible and able to flow with things.

Live life together:
Whenever Abe Park, the Edge college pastor, mentioned BWAM (Break With A Mission), he would say how during that one week, we are a true community. Now having experienced it, I believe it. Everyday we would be working on the same project together and not with just our BWAM team, but with people from various churches in California (such as Rock Harbor, the Garden, and Eastside Church) that came to work on the aquaponic as well and members of the community in Kensington (both Simple Way affiliated and not). Even though everyday was manual labor, at the end of the day, we would always cook, eat, talk, and laugh together. Everything was together, in the community and it was awesome. That time of sharing a meal, talking, and laughing was so therapeutic and it would rejuvenate me for the next day.

Both of these lifestyles beg the question; what about life back here in Irvine? back in our busy, individual schedules how can we apply some fraction of the lifestyle we had in philly?

Hopefully I can blog some more about this later, as for now, my class is starting xD


More quotes :)
Ray - a guys gotta dump when a guys gotta dump
Steph - Jenn has poo(h)!!!
Jenn - its like a blessing from God to see that you're abnormal Thomas
Steph - wah wah baby chow
Ben - turns to a dryer, "SHUSH!"
Ben - I'm playing with Shirley's poo(h)!!

Back in Irvine!

While our time on BWAM 2012 in Kensington, Philadelphia, PA is over, (we landed safe at JohnWayne last night) the learning experience definitely is not. We as a team would have definitely liked to have blogged more, but the main house we stayed in didn't have Internet access to upload stuff and the only way we could use the Internet is if we went over to Shane Claiborne's house or where some of the other Simple Way members were living.

Hopefully over we can blog about the past week and share with all of you how it was for us and in doing so, give time for ourselves to reflect upon it a bit. It is my hope that God would continue to reveal things that we picked up while we were there, things He wanted us to learn.

Getting a bit sleepy now, but I hope to start blogging a bit more about my experience tomorrow.
To any of my fellow teammates that read this, I will end with a few funny quotes that we amassed over the trip to just laugh over funny times :)


Quotes of the day:
Jenn - "Shirley can you give us one!!!"
Ray - during last minute target run a few hours before take off - "Why is it called denim and not jeans?"
Steph - while boarding her first flight ever - "I like how they have this tunnel thing"
Jenn - "You guys dont put goldfish in your salad? I thought that was normal???''