It has been eight days since Day 2 of my Paterson Mission trip. I've been busy with that mission and sleeping over my church so I didn't have access, time, nor strength at times to write this journal.
Day 2 of the mission trip was exactly the same as Day 1 but a little bit more interesting and fun. We came to eat breakfast and left Brooklyn at 8am to get to Paterson by 9am.
We continued to paint and finish the rooms from the previous day. We started to paint the ceiling and the nooks of every corner. We had a brother, Avery, who climbed the ladder and started doing the tall orders since most of us could not reach. Funny things happened during the painting. We did the bathrooms which were very cramped and dark. We came close to finishing that day but had to finish up the next day.
After lunch, we went out to the same locations as the day before to evangelize the people of Paterson. One place that was memorable to me was when we were at Eva's Village, a soup kitchen where a lot of homeless hung out. The deaconesses that were teamed up with me met a woman that we met the day before there and we were glad to see her. After we talked to another person, she came up to me and asked if we can talk to her husband who was right next to us. So we came over and began to tell him the story of God's salvation and love. Then we prayed for him and his wife joined us in prayer. Its just a simple event but very important spiritually to me. I felt that was in a way a small sign of discipleship that Jesus commanded us to do in Matthew 28. We had a short moment of fellowship and built a relationship through Jesus with these couples and talked about God's love and prayer. For her to come up to us and ask us to tell her husband of the same story we told her yesterday and to pray for him, it was a heartfelt moment knowing Jesus works through us no matter how many times we fail to love Him.
After a while, we continued to evangelize to the people hanging there. Unfortunately one of the administration workers told us to leave the premisses because we didn't have permission to be there. They told us that they didn't allow other groups to come help out the people, so to be fair we weren't allowed either. Another reason might have been the fact that they felt that it was their responsibility to evangelize since they were on their grounds. Whatever the reason, we left to another location. God bless the people over at Eva's Village, though we didn't see them afterwards I pray that they can continue their relationship with the Lord and more people can go to them and help them in discipleship in the Lord.
