This is Rich DelSenno ...
reporting from New Jersey about our trip so far. We have been very busy with work for the
Sandy hurricane relief project. We were concentrating on taking out subfloors in homes the last couple days and today we did something different. We went to a ministry that ministers to street kids and has a little local community house
in the backyard of one of the pastors. Our project was to do
some drywalling and insulate the garage area where Pastor
Ray has been mentoring some street children on Staten Island. So far we've been working very hard and with great unity. We've had a chance to pray with a gentleman that we met ... a fellow by the name of Phil. We basically took out about 34 feet of his drywall in his garage. We removed his belongings that he had left from the hurricane and put the items back into his garage. Phil explained to us what had happened: he basically lost all of his belongings on his first floor when the water totally filled his basement all the way to the ceiling, and about 3 feet into his second floor. Phil told us that as the storm started to commence, he noticed a car in front of this house that flipped over on its side with an occupant inside. The neighbors were watching out their windows and everyone rushed to the pull him out of the car, and save his life.This was just one story of many that happened during hurricane Sandy, that we listened to on our first evening here.
After work, we had an opportunity to visit the Time Square Church which is down on Broadway. Its the church that David Wilkerson had. Next, we removed sub-flooring from a lady's properties ... she was very thankful for the help. Today, we went into Staten Island again and worked with a man who has ministered to the street kids; and we basically did some work in his garage - which is the area that the kids have Bible studies on Mondays.
Monday we're going to go back and finish the work that we started at the pastor's house; and then in the evening we were invited to attend the pastor's birthday at his home.
There's been an interesting thing that happened around Stonecrest Church (where we are staying) ... there was a power outage in the city; so this church opened their facility to anyone who did not have electricity or subsequent heat in their ome. So, as we came back from our work project and prepared for that;making coffee and helping with some of this relief effort.Emergency operation management people came out and visited with us and instructed us howto help that area, during the outage.The emergency was called off when the power was restored.
This trip has been a really a wonderful adventure. Our group has bonded quite well together and we are going to finish up our work project tomorrow and then attend that party. We feel that the Lord has watched over us on this trip. We've met some wonderful people along the way and we feel that the Lord was glorified in our work and He gave us a wonderful
opportunity to serve the people of Staten Island and surrounding areas. So thank you for praying for us and we will see you onJanuary 2nd, Lord willing. Pray for safe trip home ... over and out!
Rich
