We’re blessed in this city…

Fall decided to prolong its stay this year and surprise Niagara Falls with 55+ degree weather mid-November. Evangelist Booze of the Potter’s House was quick to point out, “It’s NEVER this warm now.” Nonetheless, the sun shone, the clouds were non-existent and all of Niagara was out to greet the strange burst of warm weather sans winter jackets. The Falls themselves seemed to bask in the glory of the weather and treated visitors with a giant rainbow. The view from Goat Island, where we spend our Monday evenings, was astounding.

Blessings were the theme of Niagara Falls during my time there. During Bible Study at the Potter’s House a member of the congregation shared a testimony of God’s blessing. He told everyone about his eighth birthday and his desperate desire for a skateboard. It didn’t appear that morning and headstrong he created a make-shift skateboard out of his sister’s roller skate and a piece of wood, then proceeded to nearly kill himself while traversing the town. With skinned knees, sore elbows and a few bruises to boot he returned home to find a brand-new skateboard lying across his bed. “Had I just waited,” he told everyone, “I’d have gotten that blessing without all the mess.” He proceeded to challenge the congregation that often times we do not always see the blessings God has in store for us at the moment. Instead we barrel along trying to make things work and only wind up creating a bigger mess then if we’d waited to see God reveal the blessing in his own timing.

Our friends in Niagara continue to be blessed by God’s faithfulness. Project Angel Shoes, who we spend the summer helping prepare shoes for shipment to Africa, is gearing up for deliveries of over 20,000 shoes for the holiday season. Community Mission is busy preparing for the holidays and already dreaming up projects our volunteers can help with this summer. Though the building of Hannah’s House has been condemned in Niagara the ministry is opening a new location in Warren, PA where they will continue to bless people. Elder V continues to serve the seniors each day and play games with them. Her Youthworks art of the summer is proudly displayed and Christmas card writing was about to commence just days after my visit. Niagara COPC shared photos of the hard work our groups had done in the gardens and they plan for even more successful community gardens this coming summer.

A further testimony to God’s blessing is two pastors I was able to meet at the Falls who traveling between conventions they stopped to imbibe the beauty that is the Falls. They were able to share about their own ministries as well as hear about the work Youthworks is doing across the US. We all left our chance meeting having encouraged one another of the testimonies of God’s tremendous work. They were blown away as they listened to some of the stories of junior and senior high students giving up a week of their summer to spend time serving in other communities and drawing closer to God.

- Lauren

 

Shop Local

Niagara Falls Farmer's Market

If it is possible, shop at your local stores first! This is another great way to support your own community. The money spent at your local produce store or Farmer’s Market is most likely going to be used again within the city, creating a lovely cycle that will put more back into the community! Also, the fruits and veggies you can get here will be sooo much more fresh and delicious!
Picture is from Niagara Falls during Early Bird… Kim and Reuben

 

Niagara Falls Sunday Night During Early Bird…

On Wednesday night everyone was in the gym, hanging out before it was time for bed. The YouthWorks! staff and all the adult leaders (except the leader from Illinois, who was planning on making a quick trip into Canada, and did, and brought back ketchup-flavored chips) were engaged in an intense “leaders only” game of four square. At about ten to eleven, when lights out was going to happen, we decided the game was done, and as the crowd of spectators and players broke up, someone yelled, “There’s a bat!” and, lo and behold, there indeed was a bat. Was it the same one that had violently attacked us in our quarters upstairs the week before? No one knows. All I do know is that pandemonium ensued; seasoned YouthWorks! veteran Ben said he had never seen chaos erupt so quickly on a YouthWorks! site in his life. The first thing that happened after every junior high girl in there started screaming was that someone threw the four square ball in the bat’s general direction, and several leaders, assuming it was one of the younger boys, immediately condemned the action. It turns out that Mark threw the ball, though: “I thought it’d be sweet if I hit the bat with it.” Which it would have been, really. The four square ball was not the only ball that got thrown at the bat; the trip leader from Michigan also resorted to throwing one of his kid’s new football but got it stuck in the rafters, right after the kid had said, “Don’t use my football.” He’d gotten it two days before as a birthday gift from his small group leader; Wesley and I used rope to get it down the next day. Balls were not the only things that got hurled at the bat; the trip leader from Pennsylvania threw this dish rack at the thing super hard and it almost went right over the tarp that constitutes one wall of the girls sleeping room. That dish rack was not the only thing that wanted badly to go into the girls sleeping room; at one point in the confusion, the bat, which spent most of the time tediously circling the entire gym, made a nose dive out of our sight and into the aforementioned girls sleeping room. Obviously this solicited many a shriek and scream from everyone in there, which was the first funny part. Kinda. The second was how long the bat stayed down there; I sort of assumed that it had caught itself in some thirteen-year-old’s hair. The third funny part of the nose dive was that there was this adult leader who was in the makeshift doorway of the sleeping room, and I watched her the entire time. She put her hand over her mouth as she watched whatever it was that was happening in that tarped-off area, laughing but gasping in disbelief several times and doing double takes all over the place, and then in the end she doubled over in laughter. Which I was soon reduced to. Before and after that, Ben and I just stood in the middle of the room, watching. I was completely at a loss as to what to do, despite being sort of in charge. One of us suggested to the other that maybe we could move everyone out into the courtyard, but then, after a pause, we shook that idea off. The other site director on site that night, Steubenville’s very own Kim, didn’t help at all; it turns out that she and Lisa had been in the kitchen during the entire event, calmly eating Oreos and watching all the male staff members and leaders run around and leap into the air to try to capture or maim the bat with garbage bags, dish racks, big cardboard boxes, and Iowa flags. As for the other female staff members, well, I don’t really know where Kryn was, but I know Stockton was in a corner shielding herself and a couple middle school girls with some Happy Fun Bags, which are paper sacks that you’d imagine using for a inanimate, nonthreatening lunch and not in defense of a bloodthirsty flying mammalian. To each his or her own, I guess. Ultimately, Lisa left her cookie post and got a ladder and pole used to extend paint brushes, and the bat landed in high up in one corner. Ben climbed up the ladder and brought the pole back to smash the creature, but not before turning around and yelling, “Cover your eyes and ears.” He then knocked the bat unconscious. Hoping to salvage a bit of glory, I swooped in and grabbed the bat with my Iowa flag. If only I had a dollar for every time I’ve used that thing to carry a bat outside. Ben and I marched (“Walk slow and somber, and put your head down”) past the sobbing mourners (I am not making that up) in the hall and went outside; I released the bat into the night from whence it came. Will we see it again? Time will tell. When all was said and done, lights out was done only ten minutes later than scheduled, even though the bat’s reign of terror had seemed to last a lifetime. What did I learn from this experience? Nothing, because I still think that there was fancy little that could be done. The only precaution we have decided to take is to do “bat drills” on Sunday night so the participants are prepared for this type of intrusion when it goes down. And, lastly, Ben said he was going to text our supervisor Heather the following: “I just slaughtered a bat in front of seventy participants…do I need to fill out an incident report?”

-Reuben, SD