A busy Saturday

Yesterday easily became a busy day for the Matthew 25 house. In an effort to show a physical act of ownership for the community, we decided to try and clean up what we lovingly call "Mattress Alley".
For those of you who have visited the house and have had the experience of driving down the back alley to our parking lot, you may remember seeing a couple mattresses against the fence. Well, we decided it was time to discard them - and what a difference it makes (one friend felt lost when she noticed they were gone last night!).
Through some of our contacts, we received the name of a private garbage disposal company down on Gage. They graciously (after some talking with Marion) offered to let us bring our garbage to their facilities. Loading up Marijke's truck 3 times, we managed to bring three mattresses, three box springs, old lumber, numerous bags of trash, and various other discarded items away from our back alley and from the side of the Hasty Market on the corner. It looks much cleaner, and it was a great activity.
After taking a break for lunch, we got dressed and headed to our second 'booking' for the day: City Kidz. This proved to be an incredible experience. We went to their facility (a renovated theatre) and received a tour from Morgan (one of their staff) and Hazen (a volunteer). We spent a few moments upstairs receiving a brief outline of the program and the organization's history before heading downstairs to see the program in action for a few minutes.
Wow - what a program. The program has 9 busses that travel various routes through many areas of Hamilton's Downtown. They pick up children and bring them to the facility on Sherman Avenue. Once inside, the kids grab a seat in the old theatre and join in the singing and activities. While I have never been to a Hannah Montanna concert, City Kidz is what I anticipate it looking like. Flashing lights, songs with great actions, people on stage leading the singing and activities, team games like 'freeze dance'... it was high-energy, and highly entertaining. All of us that went have a heavy camp background and our days of running camp came rushing back. It was great.
Closer to the end of the program, the kids get a meal (usually a hamburger) and watch a bit of a movie before closing in some more songs and heading home. This week was Christmas and so every child received a gift, a turkey wrap, a stocking and a hug from Santa before heading home. They were SO excited.
The best part of the program is that it infused with Christian teachings. Through the fun songs, teachings of love and joy are spread. In activities, sportsmanship and fairness are taught. Throughout, the children are taught that Jesus loves them, that they are not a mistake, that God has a plan for them, and that it's OK to be a kid. They get a chance to revel in those facts, and just enjoy a time of fun. It's great.
Another important aspect of the program is that every child has a volunteer (or staff) that they talk to and meet every week. Often this is the person that is on the bus that makes sure they get picked up and helps them walk home. This person tries to touch base with all these children through the week and be a sort of mentor for them. This is a huge commitment for the volunteers, but is such a part of the program.
After being bombarded by all this information and getting excited about the program (and dodged the kids running out of the theatre to get their presents on the bus) we headed home to continue our busy day.
We finished our night quite peacefully, baking cookies (our tool to meet more neighbours :D), wrapping presents for the Angel Tree program we are helping with, and in good conversation.
Overall, a great day of serving and learning in the community. The trick for us now is getting involved... but not over-committed. A balance is necessary, but tricky.
Pray for us as we continue to find ministries that are really exciting and that we would love to get involved in, but need to decide where to focus. Pray for our neighbourhood as we continue to get to know our neighbours and try to find needs that we can help with.
Thank you all for your prayers so far, and your support!
Oh - and we're hopefully upgrading to a .com soon! We hope to have business/info cards ready soon and to have a small calendar of sorts available too!
Blessings,
The Matthew 25 House