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Toronto Ontario Opportunities for Learning and Service

 

The previous post was a sort of lead-in to what I'm about to tell you. The quote I put as the QOTD on October 3rd was said by Pete who was our leader for the weekend.

 

Day 1 - October 3, 2014

On the rainy, cold morning of October 3rd I woke with a less than excited mind about the day. The forecast was determined that it would be rainy and cold for the rest of the weekend; no matter where you were in southern Ontario. I was not going to let that ruin the weekend though.

After a lovely visit with Oma, while she was having her house cleaned, I returned home to pack the rest of my belongings.

Not five minutes before I was about to leave, Moma got a text from someone in Africa who wanted to Skype right then. While I hadn't seen this person for a little over a month, I was rather anxious to see their face. I left with just enough time to pick up my pastor from her house and then four of the youth and arrive at the train station in Windsor at the ETA previously discussed.

Our train left at 1:45pm from the Windsor VIA station.

We were seven people and were placed in the back of the car where there were two groups of four seats. I was sitting beside the empty seat. While we were first boarding the train and after each stop, we were constantly reminded that that route was sold out and every seat was to be occupied.

Each stop I waited and waited for all the passengers to board to see who would be sitting in our group. We were hoping for a lovely conversationer who would be glad to sit with a group of young people just on their way to the big city for a big city adventure. We also made sure to note that the person could be one of those grump-a-lots who just hate the exuberance and shenanigans of the younger generation. We were very happy to be greeted by the former.  

We arrived in TO around 6:00pm (I think) and were quite hungry by this point. We were happy to find our friend Pete and get some food.

I don't think I was the only one who thought we would be going back to our host church for a nice evening of quiet activity and then an early bedtime.

Instead, Pete took us for a walk.

Our first challenge was to buy breakfast for seven people with $28.00. Keeping in mind that everyone would need to enjoy it and it would need to last us for two days.

We bought two loaves of bread (that was Jojo and my task), peanut butter, strawberry jam, two packages of juice boxes (apple and orange), and two apples per person. All this came in at $21.00 which meant we had extra money for activities later. I was quite glad that the youth were able to choose a meal together and that it was a decently healthy meal.

After we dropped our food off at the church, we went out on a prayer walk. We visited some of the areas of the city that are less shiny and well-known than those that people usually go to Toronto to see.

We visited the Aids Memorial, compared it to the Homeless Memorial and even took a walk down Church Street. If you ever get the chance to take a walk down Church Street, make sure you enjoy the bright colours, the rainbow flags, and don't forget to understand what all of it means.

Around 10:20pm, which is past my bedtime, we stopped for a snack. Some people really needed ice cream, we found frozen yogurt instead, which is kind of the same thing. Pete and I went over to Tim's. I didn't think my tummy would enjoy eating frozen yogurt so late at night and then trying to sleep afterwards.

We finally started on our way home after our little tete-a-tete in the food court near the Tim's.

The evening walk and prayer time had given us all an idea of what we would be doing for the rest of the weekend. We were all glad to get back to our host church to rest our heads for the night.

I'm not sure if any of us were prepared for the next day, but we would have to face it sooner or later. So we attempted sleep with heavy thoughts and sounds of a dying smoke detectors batteries.

 

Mennonites in the big city, this is t-bear signing off