Final Play Days
FRIDAY
Can you believe that we have already arrived to Friday? The days have been packed and full of adventures.
Today was lighter – a built in day to catch up… in case of bad weather! Northwind does not run morning programming on Friday. So our morning was lighter. It allowed people time to rest before we packed up for play days.
Bera made us a special breakfast of his Fijian Bannock along with fresh fruit and some muffins. We enjoyed a more leisurely breakfast and Bera and Bonita joined us. He was up at 4am to prepare for us!
Breakfast became brunch and it allowed us some time to dry out our clothes some more, and then head into town. A few of us needed some basic shoes as ours were still very wet. We plan to leave these behind for donations to the street adjacent people who are in need.
Upon arrival at Northwind we packed up play day materials in preparation to return to John St. Forecast in TB is mostly clear and sunny, 30% chance of rain. Guess what… we heard it downpourered at the Cove but we had some cloud cover in TB! Amen!
John St was quieter than the rest. Smaller. There were only about 15 kids around. It allowed everyone lots of time to play and just have a good time. Lots of prizes went out along with hot dogs and drinks. I had a line up at Darts because of one large pop figure of Aladdin. They all had a good time trying to hit the target twice! Everyone was highly encouraging to one another, giving everyone a fair turn and fair chance to win.
In the area is a community garden. Only a few families take care of it, but they have corn, raspberries, cucumbers, potatoes, a few other items and a pumpkin!
After the play day we returned to the office and unloaded the games – finished for the season. Everything went into storage. The team from Northwind continues working and making connections at the housing complexes every week but play days and summer camp draw to a close.
While waiting for dinner, someone dropped into Northwind. A man named Patrick from Nigeria. He’s been here for 3 years. He came to study at the University of Windsor for economics. Didn’t like that and so came to a college here and did some business administration programs. He has finished now and is trying to get his Permanent Residence. We invited him for dinner. Speaking of dinner we had a moderately spicy Thai chicken curry last night. I cannot imagine cooking for 30 people but Yang did an amazing job! We were so well taken care of.
In the evening 2/3 of the team returned to the Cove. 5 of us stayed for street outreach. Here we bring out pop, water, juice and granola bars to the street adjacent people around the area by Northwind. Many are around city hall and surrounding areas here. There is a shelter nearby. And so we just go out to converse with them and where possible share about Northwind and programs for support, and also the gospel if open. Some we had seen at Next Steps. A few had never been before and so shared that Tues-Thurs they can come between 10am – 1pm. We had a team of 11 – two staff, 4 from other churches (including one youth). We met many out there and had some conversations. The pop is a huge draw. We stopped outside the shelter house where people were waiting for beds (opens at 9pm). We also saw the posters for one who went missing earlier in August. Unfortunately they have moved the search into a recovery mission instead of a lost person search.
Today we finish off with some rest and activity. The plan is to go to sleeping Giant PP and then return and clean and tidy.
