TOOLS, Part 3

Toronto Ontario Opportunities for Learning and Service

 

Day 3 - October 5, 2014

Sunday morning was a rather dreary time for the group. Not many of us had accomplished a lot of hours of sleep as the pipes persistently sang the song of their people. We were up a little earlier than Saturday morning and were not very excited about it.

We were essentially zombies as we dressed, packed our belongings and proceeded to the kitchen for breakfast. Pete, however, had apparently received too much sleep, he was rather annoyingly cheerful.

I thought, being up so early, that we would be "on the road" as soon as possible. Instead, we spent a while around the kitchen table chatting about everything that we had learned over the weekend, the things that surprised us and those that we had expected.

I definitely did not expect Pete to put us on Yonge Street and say "be free". He didn't even accompany us to visit with our street friends. I never would have imagined doing that. Most of the group hadn't been expecting that. We were all thinking we would be working in soup kitchens and volunteering all weekend. Fortunately, we were wrong because we learned a lot more walking down the street.

After our chat around the kitchen table, we started off to Queen's Park. I don't actually think that's exactly where we were supposed to be. We had been stopped by a wonderful police officer who informed us of the television show Suits filming up ahead. As we were on a street car, something from Toronto, with the show being based in New York, we couldn't pass by until they had finished the shoot. All this excitement led to conversations among the group about who had seen famous people and where. This led us to miss the stop that Pete had been planning to get off at.

Instead we got off at Queen's Park, right in the middle of some sort of breast cancer fundraiser run. We walked a little ways on the sidewalk beside the runners/walkers and came about part of the University of Toronto. The whole purpose of these travels was so that we could see a statue/sculpture of Jesus.

We had been told that we would be visiting the statue of homeless Jesus during our trip to Toronto, but I must be honest, I didn't not expect what I saw. I thought there would be a nice tall Jesus standing with homeless people or maybe Jesus caring for a homeless person. Instead, we find Jesus, actually homeless, curled up under a blanket, laying on a bench.

The statue is so much like a homeless person that I didn't notice it at first. When you walk down a street you aren't normally looking for homeless people, but when you see one sleeping on a sidewalk, trying not to be noticed, you usually pass by without disturbing them. We came upon homeless Jesus and I actually thought that this was  a homeless person sleeping on the bench. I had not expected that at all. What I had noticed, and what Pete pointed out is that the only place on the bench for someone to sit is at homeless Jesus' feet.

When we had finished visiting homeless Jesus, we got back on the street car and headed towards the place where we would be eating lunch.

There is a church (I believe it's a church) that cooks meals every day for poor people. Pete stressed that these people aren't necessarily homeless, they just don't have enough money to put a good meal on the table most days. For $1.00 a meal, per person, they can come to this church to eat. We were not there to help prepare the meal. Instead we were put into groups and had to eat with the rest of the people.

I sat with a mother and her three children. I had a lot of entertainment during the meal because two of her children are three year old twins. We needed to eat quick so that when we were done someone else could take our spot at the table. They were only open for an hour around lunch time.

After lunch we met in the chapel area of the building for a little prayer time. This brought us to the end of our time with Pete. He was praying for us, for the weekend and everything we had learned, and then sending us on our way.

We returned to our host church to gather our belongings and then got back on the street car towards the Eaton Centre.

Some of the youth in our group have family members who live in or around Toronto who came for a visit. We set up camp in the Starbucks in Chapters, piled all our bags in a corner and took turns shopping. In my case, window shopping, although I did buy a lovely new watch.

We took turns going to the food court to grab some supper for the train and then gathered our belongings again.

We arrived at the train station with about half an hour before our train left and were already getting in the boarding line. The train route that we took is usually a quite popular one so we were not alone in line. In other words, the line was very long.

I sat with the empty seat beside me again but not for very long. Before we left Union Station I was greeted by a lovely woman about the same age as me. After talking for a bit we found out that she was originally from Russia. Then I mentioned that my great grandparents came from Russia. I had to do a lot more explaining when she asked if they speak Russian. She was very confused that these people who came from Russia spoke mostly German. Mennonites, can't take them anywhere.

We arrived in Windsor about fifteen minutes after our ETA which was much less of a delay than I thought it would be.

With our bags packed into the back of the mini van we were on our way home.

It was late and everyone was tired but I think we were all very glad that we had decided to be a part of the TOOLS trip.

If you want to hear more about our trip, I suggest you be in church on Sunday.

 

Mennonites returning to the home front, this is t-bear signing off