SFSP Day 27 - Last Day!

Monday, July 8

Ok, I'm going to cheat and post multiple pictures for today haha.  Today was a staff free day, so we got to do whatever we wanted.  One contingency went to the North Face outlet in Oakland, but I opted to stay in the city, do a little shopping, and hang out with Margaret, who's one of the coolest people ever :)

View of the skyline from the top floor of a hotel downtown 

 The Indian restaurant where Margaret and I ate was DELICIOUS! Wish I had a picture of the food too :)

Margaret finally gets to do the one things she's been looking forward to all summer - riding the cable cars down Hyde Street.

So that's all folks...that was my summer in San Francisco!

SFSP Day 26 - Staff debrief step 2: Eat

Sunday, July 7

Trying to decide what we want. Everything looks so delicious!

We spent a few hours talking about what went well this summer, what didn't, and what we would change for future summers.  I have now staffed San Francisco Summer Project 3 times and it's been 3 different projects, begging the questions - what is the purpose of this project?  What are we trying to accomplish here?  How do we make it more continuous?  As an engineer, I HIGHLY value efficiency, so I'm grateful we could talk about how to make things smoother for future summers.

And of course, what better way to celebrate a long day than to eat?

SFSP Day 25 - Staff debrief step 1: Take a nap!

Saturday, July 6

Staff men taking a group nap

After waiting for the students to leave for the day, the staff team headed over to another hostel for our 3-day debrief to evaluate the project, how our team worked, and to encourage and pray for one another.  We've been pretty wiped though, so as soon as we got to our other hostel, most of us took a looooong nap.

SFSP Day 24 - The last day with students

Friday, July 5

One of the murals on immigration on Balmy Street. The entire alleyway is covered in murals addressing concerns of the community, like gentrification and politics.

One of my highlights this summer as been my role of helping the project team see the city through a spiritual lens.  Today I took them to the Balmy Street (an alleyway full of murals), and had them observe the paintings and think about what message the artist was trying to convey.

Last year, when I took the team here, we just walked through in about 5 minutes and then wandered through the Mission, not really thinking too much about what we'd seen.  However, this time when I had them pay attention to the murals and reflect, I noticed a lot of details I had completely missed last year.  There's so much more complexity than I realized, and there's a story underneath that only required attention to hear.  How much more so for the city as a whole, and for the people we pass by in the city?

My women's Bible study (yeah Team C!)

It's also our last day with students, so we had our staff farewell banquet tonight :)  It's been fun - I'll especially miss working with my women's Bible study!

SFSP Day 23 - Happy Independence Day!

Thursday, July 4

Tabby looking at the downtown skyline (not pictured) from Bernal Heights

After a training time in the morning (led by Wayne on discerning God's will), we had a team social hiking up to Bernal Heights.  The walk from the bus stop goes through some seriously steep hills even before we got to the mountain itself!  From the top, you can see a panoramic of the city - the Golden Gate Bridge to the northwest, downtown skyscrapers to the northeast, and houses laid out in (mostly) neat rows all throughout. Simply beautiful.

SFSP Day 22 - Who am I trying to kid?

Wednesday, July 3

Fisherman's wharf (courtesy of Kelly)

After an exhausting 5.5 hour commute to and from Berkeley yesterday (thanks to the BART strike), Wayne and I decided not to put our students through that again and instead go somewhere within city limits to share our faith.  After considering a few options, we decided on Fisherman's Wharf, one of the biggest tourist attractions in San Francisco.  There would definitely be people our team could talk to.

We gave our team the freedom to do whatever they needed to do - go survey people on their spiritual beliefs, go hang out with God in personal prayer time, or whatever else they could think of.

To be honest, I was exhausted from yesterday's commute (and Monday was a long day for me too), and I was in no mood to talk to people about Jesus.  But I felt torn - I'm on staff and I should be modeling evangelism for our students, even when we don't necessarily feel like it.

I finally decided to just grit my teeth and go look for people to talk to, so I tagged along with a pair of students and for the next hour, we wandered around the pier looking for people to talk to.

In my head, I would tell myself:
"He looks busy."
"She's on her phone."
"They look like they're in a really intense conversation."

And on and on...making one excuse after another not to talk to the myriads of people we passed.

Finally, I stepped back and asked myself, "Jess, what are you doing?"

I was trying to make an appearance of attempting evangelism.  It was all a show, just to say, "Look, I walked around looking for people, but I couldn't find anyone to talk to.  Oh well, at least I tried!"

But who was I trying to kid?  God?  Even if no one else knew my motives, God most certainly did!  So why continue this charade?  I finally pulled my aside the two students who were with me and I suggested that we take the 30 minutes before meeting up with the team to pray.  When our team came together to debrief the day, I confessed my attitude and I think the students were relieved - "Staff feel like this too????"  

Believe it or not, I don't always want to share the gospel either, and no, I haven't quite figured out this leadership thing yet.  I still don't know how to read the team's energy.  I don't always know when to scrap plans to give our team space to rest and when to push them even when they're tired.  But I'm learning and I'm growing and hopefully I'll get better at leading in that tension.

SFSP Day 21 - Longest commute EVER

Tuesday, July 2

View of downtown SF from the ferry

The BART is still on strike, but we still wanted to go to campus (Berkeley) and survey people on their views on spiritual things.  Usually, it takes us about 45-50 minutes to get to campus by BART, but with the strike, we took the Muni to the Ferry Building, took a ferry across the Bay to Oakland, then took a bus for another hour to campus.  

It took us 2.5 hours to get there...and we were exhausted, but we had some incredible conversations on campus.  John and I met a philosophy major from New Jersey, who grew up Catholic realized at the age of 12 that he didn't want to love God just because he was afraid of going to hell because that wouldn't be real love; that would be fear.  He started asking a lot of questions and is looking for something out there but not entirely sure what.

Nearly everyone else on our team got into long, significant conversations with people they met on campus.  I think God knew we needed some encouragement after our epic journey!

The commute home took even longer - 3 hours!! The ferries were packed, with unprecedented ridership due to the strike.  Thankfully, we were going against traffic -- the ferry lines in the direction of traffic wrapped around the ferry building!

 Team leaders (Wayne, me and Margaret) napping on the ferry back home

My team was heroic in trooping through a 5.5 hour commute, but I don't think we can do this again tomorrow - too expensive and too draining!