Well, I have been in New York for a week now. It has been wonderful, tiring, challenging, hot, wet, and fun. Last week I was the 'floater' in our group. I went to Chinatown on Monday and Tuesday, the Bronx on Wednesday and Thursday, and Brooklyn on Friday. Chinatown is fun, very fast moving and crowded. There were lots of stairs to climb. It is easier to understand New York when you realize that there are 8 million people living here. Everyone is literally on top of each other. Everything is a lot slower as a result. But it is not as scary as I thought (or was led to believe). It is a lot less scary than Santiago, Chile, plus most everyone here speaks English. Well, except in Chinatown.

Clubs in each place were very different, and yet the same. Kids act like kids no matter what their culture. But the kids in the Bronx are a lot different from the kids in Chinatown. We were in community centers in the housing projects. NYCHA (New York City Housing Authority) is having Day Camps for their kids, and we are able to teach in some of them. We had more behavoir problems in the Bronx. However, they were excited about saying their verses. The Word of God has a powerful effect. I'm glad I was able to go to clubs in different locations, because I got to see a more complete picture of what CEF is doing in NYC.

Saturday was sight-seeing day. We went to Times Square, Central Park, Ground Zero, the Museum of Natural History (where Night at the Museum was filmed), and Trinity Church (which is on the corner of Broadway and Wall Street and where part of National Treasure was filmed). It was a very good day, and I'm glad we were able to see the sights so we could 'really' say we had been to New York. For supper we went to Bubba Gump's, which is an experience in itself. I actually had shrimp and liked it! Sunday we went to two churches, one being the Brooklyn Tabernacle. We didn't know that the 3:30 service is actually an hour and a half gospel concert--but we were pleasantly surprised. One of the songs still gets stuck in my head. So the weekend wasn't exactly relaxing, but it was a lot of fun. I was able to feel the heartbeat of the city a little more closely, as well as experience downtown Manhattan which is drastically different from some other areas of the city.

I'm looking forward to what God has in store for next week.