Mam Te Rad!

Hi guys, this is Jessie again. Thought I'd check back in, since I'm on the other side of the world and my dad insists that you're all interested! hahah.

So far my trip has been good! I've had the chance to see almost all of Prague, the most beautiful city I have ever seen. It really is spectacular, the whole city is made up of four to six level buildings with the prettiest arcitecture [sp?] ever. They're all side by side. It's definitely artsy, and original in it's own way. I've taken a billion and two pictures, and you can go see my myspace or facebook and see them in the albums I've posted!

I also went to Berlin, Germany yesterday. It's the first time I've been back since I was like... two! I showed my passport, which says that i was born in Germany everywhere I went, and I either got a discount or free stuff. So it was totally worth it. hah. We jumped on a tour buss that drove to all the big sites all over the city, we could jump off, and hang out, and then another bus would pick us up in 15 minutes. The best parts were definitely the Holocaust memorial, and Checkpoint Charlie, I've included pictures of both at the bottom of this!

As for life at the center... It's non stop. No lie. Every day we are working all day, daily house chores and building things, I get messssssy.

The biggest thing we do is our "Coffee House Ministry", It's like a street ministry. Four days a week we send out two teams, one walks the streets and the other goes to the homeless villages. I've done both, and both are insanely depressing. I wrote about the street team last time, now the village ministry. There's a huge, abandoned apartment building that about 20 families live in. It is the dirtiest, nasties, smelliest, most satan possesed place i have ever been in. It stank of "a sun roasted mixture of vomit, dehydrated urine, and rotting garbage".

Yes, I just quoted myself from my journal. The Autobiography of an Amazing Girl.

I didn't eat for the entire night and next day. I have never seen anything else like this before, there were thousands of flies, really, flying everywhere. To the point where we had to duck down not to inhale them. The first room inside the door was stacked over our heads with garbage. The stairs were either covered in mud or poop, i couldn't decide which it was. I wasn't breathing through my nose after that first whiff almost made me pass out.

We made it upstairs to where a family was living. I didn't know whether to cry or throw up when I saw the kids rooms, with neatly made beds with one dirty stuffed animal on each, and football sized rats running from our feet. This room was also filled with swarms of flies, and the corners with old needles and the little plastic bottles their parents get their drugs in.

There are 20 families that live in that building, and another 10 or 15 that live behind it. They bunker down under old raised rails for trains from the trainstation. There is a little "living room" area made up of broken and rotting chairs around a fire pit. There is nothing but garbage of the worst kind, feet deep, for at least 100 yards in any direction.

I've never seen anything like this in my life. Most people haven't. It's reall ythe kind of stuff you see on TV, on those cheesy commercials asking you to send money to Africa and stuff. Actually, I think it was worse. These guys don't need money, all it would do is fuel their drug and alcohol problems. They need God.

I don't really know what can drive someone to this point, but that is thanks to my parents. I was raised well. Don't worry Grandma and Grandpa, you bred my dad good. I thank Jesus every day that I never fell into drugs. I think that God gave me a special place in my heart for people who have, though. I didn't know why i was here until i got the chance to go to this apartment complex. I've also got a few pictures attatched below.

Thanks again, to all of you who contributed to my trip. Please keep me in your prayers! I have to run now, I don't have the privledge of unlimited internet access.

I would not trade this summer for the world.

Looking into one of the rooms in the apartments

Under the rails, the living room

Me doing my part, with the help of winterfresh, at the berlin wall!

Me hanging out in the Holocaust Memorial.

Me, Staining wood. Getting dirty.

Checkpoint Charlie, Berlin

Someone sleeps here. No joke, we woke them up.