testimony for Boston Project

Boston Project Testimony

When I first signed up for the Boston Project, I was completely unaware of what exactly I would be doing. I was unaware that I would be taking only two showers that week. I was unaware that I would have to paint and do yard work and make quilts. I was unaware that I would be sanding boards for six hours. And I was also unaware of how God would use this trip to impact my life.
The Boston Project, for me, started with a challenge the first night to allow God to break the box that we put Him in. Peter, one of the staff, explained that we often put God into a box, defining Him by certain words and certain expectations, and he challenged all of us to let God break the borders we put around Him, and go beyond our expectations. It was a speech I had heard before, but I hadn’t really thought too much about it. I had read the miraculous stories of missionaries who had been protected by angels, of terminally ill who were healed through prayer, and of all the rest of God’s wonders. I thought my box was as big as it ever was going to get; I had heard it all. And maybe I had. But hearing stories can’t hold a candle to actually experiencing them.
Many of the challenges I faced that week were physical. Every morning, we got up at 7 o’clock (and, if we were getting a shower that day, at 6:30), which is three hours before the time when I normally get up in the summer. The first day was spent painting an elderly lady’s back deck, outside in the hot sun, and the second sanding long wooden boards till my arms were sore. And of course, every day there was inevitably the walking up two flights of stairs to bed at the end of the day. I was constantly hot and sweaty and tired. And I didn’t realize until I got back home that God had been providing for me even then. In such an environment, it would be easy to feel like giving up, or at least feel depressed, but God had given me a cheerful spirit that week, and an ample energy supply that got exhausted at the end of the day, but was always renewed by the next morning. The fellowship I had with the other people around me, the knowledge that I was doing something to help someone else, and the joy of doing God’s work helped to keep me going each day.
And thankfully, the highlights of my week definitely outweighed the challenges. One of my favorite days was Wednesday, when some of us were given the opportunity to serve the homeless in the Boston Commons, with Starlight Ministries. We handed out sandwiches, chatted with the homeless people in the park, and held a short service there. It was an eye-opening experience for me, to interact with the homeless for the first time, help to meet their needs, and listen to their stories. It felt good to be helping others with their basic needs, and through hearing what they had to say, I gained a new perspective of these people, most of which lost their homes due to the economy, to unfortunate family circumstances, or to illness, age, or disability. Of course, to learn such things is upsetting, but it makes one all the more grateful to get a fuller view of things than what one had previously.
Another really great time was the time we had as a group, whether it was at our service sites working with kids from other churches, our Dinner Downtown with our respective churches, or our time quilting sleeping bags for the homeless. These were times where we got to know each other, bond over our sandwiches or quilts or sandpaper or what-have-you, and generally fellowship and have a great time.
But undoubtedly, the best day was Thursday, when we participated in spontaneous service. We were divided into small groups of three or four kids, with one or two leaders, were given plastic bags of random materials, and were assigned to different areas of the Boston Commons to serve in whatever ways we could. By the time my group had walked to our area of the park, it had started to rain. Soon, the rain had gotten so bad that we all had to take shelter under one of the huge trees…right next to two people. One was a street musician, who was trying to pack up his instrument and speakers; we were able to give him a garbage bag from our set of materials, to cover up his speakers with. He thanked us, and left. The other was a college student named Amanda, with whom we spent the next half an hour talking about everything from serving the community to Nietzsche to the meaning of love. Although we weren’t sure of what sort of impact we had made on her by the time she left to find dryer haunts, I feel that God had given us much common ground to talk about, her being a sociology major and I being interested in psychology, and that both parties had learned something new from the conversation. Just after she left, a mother arrived under the tree, with her two boys, ages 4 and 2. The four-year-old was sobbing terribly about how he hated the rain, and we were able to give him the rest of our materials (some markers, paper, etc.), inside the plastic bag, so that he could cover his head with it. The mother thanked us, and even said, “God bless” as she left with the kids. We had used up our materials and time, and we were all soaked, so we ran the rest of the way back to the subway station, screaming and laughing the whole way. One kid, Duncan, was shampooing his hair as he ran (he was taking advantage of the extra shower).
So why did I bother to say all that, and describe that one hour in such detail? That event, our Spontaneous Service, was what really broke the box. I realized, after we had returned to our “home” and changed into dry clothing, that the many blessings I had received that day were too coincidental to be coincidence. If I hadn’t been wearing flip flops that day, something which I hadn’t done the rest of that week, I would have ruined the only pair of sneakers I owned. If it hadn’t rained, we wouldn’t have met those people, or have been able to help them out. If Amanda hadn’t been sociology major, we probably would have had a lot less to talk about, and wouldn’t have gotten to the deeper topics of the meaning of love and the existence of God. If Duncan had not had shampoo in his pocket, we would have missed out on the hilarious sight of him sprinting past us, his hair covered in foam.
Experiencing these little miracles for myself really helped to break the box I had put God in. Previously, I had believed that God did do great and miraculous miracles, but only for the missionaries and others doing great, life-threatening works. But God personally went and brought us a few little miracles, so that we could be witnesses of his love and mercy for the lowly and seemingly insignificant. His love for us was and is so great, that He is willing to get into the details of our lives, creating small miracles for us to rejoice over. And since we are to love as He loves us, I now understand, and hope that you understand, a bit more about what it means to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength…Love your neighbor as yourself.”