TENT

Today the team split into two groups of six. One group of six stayed in the building to help in the warehouse. This time 3 of the 6 counted/sorted 15 palettes of food getting ready for their Thanksgiving boxes of food they give to each family.

The other three moved all the furniture out of a room so they could rebuild shelves we took out of the one part of the warehouse yesterday.

After lunch the team split up again with one group rebuilding the shelving units in another area. If you look in the pictures theses are metal industrial shelves that are very heavy.

The other part of the group went to the prop room and moved all the props to a new location in the building.

We have spent a lot of time in the warehouse this trip. The reason why is the warehouse use to be off site in another building. Metro decided to stop renting another location and bring the warehouse onsite. So we are helping shift rooms to make more room for everything they need to store.Food counting/storage

Furniture on the move

Prop relocation or a new friend?

The other six headed out to represent Metro as an arm into the community. The NYPD donated all the painting materials to have the a church painted from top to bottom inside. So now they had the place, supplies but no man power. That’s where we came in, we were sent to paint!Our before shot, note our clean looking selves. We met up with Lily & Jason who have a ministry in the area called TENT (To Elevate Not Teardown). Then Vincinte on the end in stripes volunteers and does so much for the community inside and outside this building, he was our foreman, but didn’t speak a lick of English.This was today’s task, which seems daunting walking into without all the supplies you would typically plan to have for a job like this. But that seems to be what we are good at, use what we have and complete the task!

So many stories came out of today. While we were painting in the morning a lady came by crying and upset as her mother who is bedridden and doesn’t speak English was tricked into signing her house over to a developer. Their house was locked up and they were put out on the street without any notice. Jason was telling us this is happening all over Brooklyn, developers are tricking the locals into to signing over their houses. Due to the language barrier, lack of education and money to fight back, it is happening everyday and causing a lot of hate crimes in the area.

When there is a gathering of people, they like to feed you!! They made us chicken and rice. Oh and the lady at the end is the one whose family was evicted, she made sure to come and serve us, so humbling with what she was going through today! We finished the walls in the morning and were ready to tackle the ceiling in the afternoon. Vincente was the one who painted the clouds on the ceiling so he was keeping a close eye on us. In the end he was very happy and didn’t mind we painted over his cloud ceiling.The guys figuring out the paint sprayer…without tools to tighten the nut. It all worked out eventually.Let’s just say spraying makes a bit more of a mess and our clean selves quickly disappeared.So happy to connect with Lily and Jason and represent Metro! Lily was healed of thyroid cancer and Jason was healed of MS! Their stories are incredible and because of what God did for them they have devoted their lives to give back to the community and others for the rest of theirs.

Outside the building. We may still have paint on us but the reward was great! People in the community kept stopping by all afternoon to have a look at the “new paint job”, apparently word travels fast!

We went home and Mark made us all a yummy Mac n’ Cheese for supper! This is our home this week, eating as a big family of 12!Tomorrow we are doing a few jobs in the morning then heading out to do sidewalk sites from noon til 8/9pm. It will be a long but great day!