First impressions

Our first few days have presented a pretty steep learning curve. We're all getting used to our lodgings, trying to find the necessities in our neighborhoods, learning the subtleties of subway travel (did you know that 30-day unlimited-use Metrocards take 18 minutes to recharge once you've swiped them?), getting a working knowledge of New York geography, and getting acquainted with one another.

After getting the basics of all of this down on Monday, we convened at Evangel Church in Queens for our orientation to the training itself. We'll all be kept busy; each trainee is responsible to work with a service team to take care of communications [Editor's note: My assignment to the communications team brought about this blog!], logistics, hospitality, worship, and medical needs, a field ministry team assigned to one of six churches in Manhattan and Queens, and a small group for personal discussion of the issues we deal with and the challenges we face as itinerating missionaries.

On Tuesday, we began the routine that will characterize much of this month. In the morning, we traveled to our respective field ministry sites: Living Faith Community Church in Flushing, Queens, Bethel Gospel Assembly in Harlem, L'Église Évangélique Amour du Christ on the Manhattan's Upper East Side, Iglesia Nueva Vida in Woodside, Queens, New Life Fellowship in Elmhurst, Queens, and Astoria Community Church, also in Queens.

We spent that morning getting to know the churches we'll be serving this month and the ministries they will want us to participate in or initiate. Some of us will be participating in Vacation Bible Camp and Sunday School, while others will help their churches offer classes in English as a second language, assist with medical mercy ministry, or participate in other outreach efforts.

In the afternoon, we returned to Evangel for a time of worship and teaching from Bill Yarbrough, an MTW staffer with years of experience planting churches in Latin America. Bill provided a number of insights into what it means to engage in Christian ministry and spiritual disciplines while nurturing emotional health in the process. He'll be leading our class sessions for the rest of the week.

After a day off for Independence Day today, we'll be picking up where we left off tomorrow, getting deeper into our field ministry work and discussing the issues that will face us in each of our mission field sites.