On our first full day in the City of Nashville, our team was ecstatic to dive into serving the community! After opening the morning with some personal quiet time of prayer and reflection, our team departed for our ministry sites. We experienced a wide range of ministry opportunities, including serving at the Andrew Jackson Boys and Girls Club and Project Transformation, both community-oriented summer day camps for children from low-income neighborhoods.
One of our groups served at the Giving Gardens, providing manual labor picking weeds and cleaning fields. The Giving Garden produces over forty-one thousand pounds of produce annually, distributed amongst twenty-one different local partners who serve food to low-income individuals and families.
Another of our serving groups had the pleasure of assisting at N.I.C.E., a community-based organization dedicated to serving refugees and immigrants through direct social services and educational programs.
After lunch, all of our groups embarked on a tour of Nashville learning and praying over historic sites and various neighborhood landmarks, schools, neighborhoods and ministry partner locations.
CSM staff led our groups in a neighborhood immersion project where students took on the identity of an average family from various different neighborhoods in town. Roles within the family were assigned to each student and collectively, they made decisions about how to provide food for the impromptu family dinner while taking into account the limited resources they had as well as unexpected expenses like buying toilet paper and peanut butter for the home. We then debriefed the experience and discussed some of the causes and remedies of poverty. One of the biggest takeaways for groups was realizing that poverty is not simply a lack of material resources but the result of broken relationships.
We closed out our day with "Porchtime," a nightly program in which we recap both funny moments and moments where we saw Jesus move. After this recap we enjoyed a period of worship before we soaked up our first talk regarding Luke 5.
We closed out our day with "Porchtime," a nightly program in which we recap both funny moments and moments where we saw Jesus move. After this recap we enjoyed a period of worship before we soaked up our first talk regarding Luke 5.
Nashville is off to a great start and we are excited for what tomorrow will hold for our students!
