Cornerstone Mission Trip to
New York City
March 12 � 19, 2005

Comments by Luke Wilson

March 11 - Prelude
I figure I'll start this record of the trip with some of my ideas going into the trip. From the start, I've been aware that it will be quite an experience, hopefully one that will change my outlook on things, put my own sufferings in perspective, and get a personal understanding of true need. Even if our work doesn't make a significant impact, we'll still be contributing something, and we should all walk away with a better-developed perspective on things.

March 12
We travelled by plane from Omaha to the Twin Cities, and then to New York from there. It was my first trip by plane (that I can remember), and it went pretty well. We had the good fortune to randomly meet a tour guide with a van just as we were trying to figure out how to get our bags from LaGuardia Airport to our hostel near the intersection of 103rd Street and Amsterdam Avenue. Though it cost us, we got to take a scenic route there, and we got there together. We bought some groceries and cooked our first meal that night, and then later in the evening we had a worship service to sort of get things started spiritually. It's something Melissa, my pastor from Cornerstone (my church on campus), does every year in church during Lent: we washed each other's hands as Jesus washed his disciples' feet. It helped us to reflect on serving others and being served by others, a very appropriate topic for what we will be doing this week. Not too long after that, we started going to bed, even though it was just 8PM or so. It had been a long day!

March 13
We started the day by attending Christ United Methodist Church here in NYC. We were invited by UNL alumni who went to Cornerstone. The service was held in a very beautiful, ornate church building, and, yes, I will be bringing back a picture of it. We found out later in the day that some of the food we bought on Saturday had gone bad because the refrigerator we stored it in was not keeping it nearly cold enough, so we had to go buy some more food to replace it. After allowing time for some of us to take a nap, we went for a walk through Central Park. Some time after supper, we met for some more reflective time to prepare us for the actual mission work we will start on Monday.

March 14
Well, the real work began today. We went to YSOP (the organization we're working through) first thing in the morning. We had breakfast with another group from Virginia, and we discussed what we would be doing during the week. I was put with a group of four out of the nine who came with me; the other five were their own group. My group went to help out at a soup kitchen in one St. John's church in Brooklyn. Though I can't remember the name of the neighborhood, it's a famously rough one. As I learned later in the day, it's a neighborhood that Bobby Kennedy pledged to clean up back in the sixties, and it's only now showing some signs of improvement. I could tell when we got off of our train that it wasn't a pleasant place: the buildings looked old and in disrepair, and there seemed to be garbage everywhere.
The soup kitchen we worked at was fairly disorganized. We spent a lot of time waiting to be told what to do, partly because there were two other volunteer groups there, one from the University of Illinois, and one from Buffalo, NY, and partly because the establishment was low on official staff, so the woman we reported to was always moving from place to place to get things organized. For all its problems, though, I'm sure that place is a wonderful gift to those who rely on it. Sadly, we didn't get much contact with the soup kitchen's clients; we spent most of our time cleaning the place up, moving food around in storage, and waiting for instructions.
After we finished our work for the day, we returned to YSOP to discuss our work with the other teams, including those from Virginia. There were some interesting stories, but I don't have time for them here, and my group may end up going to some of the places the Virginia groups went to. We work at a different site each day.
We had no formal plans for our evening, but some of us (including me) spent some time wandering around Greenwich Village in southern Manhattan. It was enjoyable, but nothing worthy of noting here happened.
I've noticed that I've grown somewhat accustomed to the subway system, although I wonder if I'll come away from this with some hearing loss - those trains are loud. The subway has also been a scene for some real moral dilemmas. In our travels in just these few days, we've seen people come through the moving subways asking for handouts with some regularity. I feel compelled to do something for these people, particularly since I'm here to help the poor, but I don't want to give my money to someone who is in fine financial shape but taking advantage of people's generosity. We had a fairly in-depth discussion in our room one day on the subject, but I still have real problems deciding what to do in such situations. It's a new situation every time: one day a woman looking for a place to stay for the night, another day a woman asking for money or even just food to feed her children, another day a man who claimed to be staying in a homeless shelter apparently selling newsletters on charitable organizations, with the motto, "I'm not asking for a handout, but a hand up." These people range from the questionable to the laudable. I was actually impressed with the man I mentioned last - he seemed to be willing to work his way out of poverty, and in a fair world, nobody with the willingness to work should have to live in a homeless shelter.

March 15
I don't have too much time tonight, so I'll have to keep this entry somewhat shorter. I apologize for the rather crude nature of my writing; I'm under time pressure as I write these because I have to pay by the minute for Internet access. Our work site today was on the very edge of Harlem, near the north end of Central Park, on 109th Street in Manhattan. For anyone who's interested, the establishment we worked at was called YCP (unfortunately, I can't remember exactly what the acronym stands for right now). It was much more organized than the place we worked at yesterday; we even got briefed on the organization and what it does before we got to work. It is primarily a food pantry, distributing food in bags to those who need it, but it is open for people to collect food 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. It's the only such establishment in the state of New York. It also serves two meals a day and provides shelter for about 12 people overnight. It provides some services I hadn't thought of, like free haircuts on Wednesdays and showers most of the time. Our task today was to help process the delivery that just arrived. The pantry area appeared to be an old school gymnasium, with shelves behind metal garage-style doors on all sides.
The delivery today consisted of an entire semi truck, completely filled with food. After we had brought it all inside, the room was a maze of towers of boxes. Besides bringing the new food inside, we had to remove old food from the shelves, shelve the new food, and then put the moderately old food in front of it (the older food was moved into another area to be used absolutely first). The four of us were, of course, not the only workers; we were joined by a large number of people who had served time for misdemeanors and were required to do community service as part of their parole. We were quite efficient, and we got our job done in good time. However, it was such a large job that we didn't finish too long before we had to head to YSOP for our activities for the rest of the day.
Today at YSOP, we didn't just meet and discuss our work, we did even more. Joining together with the group from Virginia and the rest of our group, we prepared a meal and shared it with about 12 people from Peter's Place, a drop-in center, or place where anyone who wants food, shelter, or even to just use the bathroom, is free to "drop in." The group was primarily older men, as Peter's Place focuses on people over the age of 55 or so. We cooked up quite a nice meal. It was quite large too; we had a great deal of leftovers, which was apparently sent to a food pantry. While eating, we had some interesting conversations with the clients of Peter's Place, but unfortunately, I don't have time to write about any of them. In fact, that's about all the time I have for tonight.

March 16
Today my group went just twelve blocks or so north to a soup kitchen in Manhattan. One of the Virginia groups had been there earlier, and I'd heard some things about it. The person in charge is a professional chef, and his idea is that the less-fortunate among us deserve not only a free meal, but also the dignity of a somewhat restaurant-like atmosphere in which to receive it (and high-quality food as well). Due to its unconventional approach, it's come to be known as the "four-star soup kitchen." Talking to the head chef during the day, I heard the story of how he got involved in this particular soup kitchen. Back in 2001, he was about to sign a contract to open a new restaurant in downtown Manhattan, about two blocks from the World Trade Center. He wasn't going to make the commitment until September 15, so after the events we are all too familiar with occurred on the 11th, his plans changed drastically. It was shortly after that that he heard about this soup kitchen that was looking for help. It turned out that the soup kitchen was losing pretty much all of its senior staff and so going through a period of major change. He was pretty much given free reign with the establishment, and he turned it in the direction it's headed now. He also said that in 2003, his soup kitchen (and all related charitable activities in the church that sponsors it) suffered a 90% budget cut because so much money was going to relief for the events of 9/11/2001. The soup kitchen was of high enough priority that it survived, and since then it's experienced a period of rebuilding.
Given its fancy nature (by comparison with other soup kitchens), this establishment doesn't serve too many people at once - about 77 people at maximum, I think. I like the idea that offering poor people nice food in a restaurant-like setting helps them preserve their dignity, but I also observed some waste that I felt resulted partly from attention to the appearance of the food (of course, it doesn't take much waste for me to notice; I can't stand seeing things go to waste). It was certainly a different experience from the other two organizations my group has worked with.
After finishing our work for the day, we listened to a man talk about his charitable organization and the work it does. I'll have to get the name of it later for those of you who are curious. What really impressed me is that the organization focuses on getting homeless (and otherwise disadvantaged) people back on their feet, and it claims a 90% success rate. The guy who gave us the speech spent most of it on his life story - in short, he was a black man from Virginia who came to New Jersey to escape the sharecropping and such that his race often got stuck doing in the South, he made a lot of money in business, and he then lost it all in drug addictions and other such things. He fell in with the homeless community in New York and was very impressed by the people he met. In 1986, he got a sudden motivation to get out of that situation, and, in time, he came to where he is today.
In the evening, all of us from Cornerstone went out to eat in a little restaurant in Little Italy, we shopped around there and in Chinatown, which meets and blends into Little Italy, and then most of us went up the Empire State Building, which was an impressive experience indeed. Unfortunately, my time is running out once again, so I'll have to call it quits.

March 17
Today, my group went to help out at Peter's Place, the same organization from which the people came to eat with us on Tuesday night. We saw some familiar faces; in fact, some people remembered us by name. There was one man I'd talked with a bit on Tuesday that I didn't recognize at first, which made me feel kind of bad, but I did remember him after I thought about it for a bit.
We spent a significant portion of the morning helping with a project started by one of the clients of Peter's Place. For this project, people staying there paint cards, sell them, and use the proceeds for a charitable purpose. The program was originally intended to buy Christmas gifts for poor children, and it was quite successful in that. They decided to do it again for Easter, and then the Asain tsunami struck. After that tragedy, they decided to give the proceeds to help in relief for it rather than to buy Easter gifts for poor children. We spent a few hours just making painted cards along with some of the people staying at Peter's Place. Later on, the staff was going to read a play* to the clients, and they were short on men to read the male parts. Of course, I soon became a part of that performance. It was Irish-themed for Saint Patrick's Day, and after we finished, one of the staff members who had been reading asked me if my Irish accent was genuine, which kind of made my day. One of the clients, by the name of Richard, was dragged into the performance himself, and he caught my attention afterward and talked with me for a while. He's an interesting character; apparently, he dropped out of school at an early age and got into some form of crime, which ended him up in prison. While he was there, a guard (or someone) asked him something about reading, and when he brushed the question off, this individual literally threw a book at him. Out of curiosity, I suppose, he started reading it, and soon he was a voracious reader. I could tell from the things he was talking about during the day that he was quite well-read. After that, we helped serve lunch to the clients. We didn't get to have any ourselves, so we decided to grab some food ourselves at nearby restaurants. We were going to return after that, but when we considered again what they had told us would be going on, we decided we wouldn't really be able to help out, so we left and took the time to tour Grand Central Station. After that, we had a wrap-up session at YSOP, then got back to our room, changed, and went to see The Producers.

* "Cathleen Ni Houlihan," from The Collected Plays of W.B. Yeats

March 18
I apologize for the lateness of this post; I had it completely typed Friday night, but then I ran out of time, and the kiosk I was using didn't give me a chance to come back to it, so it was lost. Rather than put more money in the machine, I opted to wait until I got back to my own computer to post. So, here follows the entry: I know I didn't really write anything about The Producers yesterday. It's not for lack of things to say, I just ran out of time again. It was a really funny play. How could it not be, with Mel Brooks as the writer? I must say, though, just walking around Times Square, which was right by the theatre we saw the play in, was an experience in itself.
Anyway, on to today. After our 9:30 breakfast, we took the subway clear to the south end of Manhattan so we could catch a ferry to Leberty Island. All I have to say about the line for the ferry is that you really know a line is long when it takes about as long to reach the end of it as you would expect to wait in a normal line. When we got in the line, we found out that we were suposed to have tickets already, so we sent a couple of people to do that. Fortunately, the line moved quickly, so by the time they got back, we were getting close (about the length of a normal line) to the ferry. We didn't know in advance if the Statue of Liberty would be open to tourists. It turned out that at least the base on which the statue stands (it's pretty tall itself) was open, but tickets were long since sold out. Still, we were able to wander around the island and get really good views of bothe the statue and the Manhattan skyline.
After spending some time on Liberty Island, we took the ferry to Ellis Island, which used to be the primary site for immigrants to enter the United States (from the Atlantic, at least). The buildings used for registration of immigrants and other such functions have since been turned into museums. We looked around there for a while, then headed back to Manhattan, where we took the subway north to the former site of the World Trade Center Towers.
Unfortunately, it was hard to get a good view of the site because most areas that overlooked it were draped in a black mesh that really spoiled the view. Still, the significance of what I saw was not wholly lost on me. What stood out the most was that some buildings surrounding the areas still show signs of damage. The fact that they still haven't been fully repaired after more than three years speaks to the magnitude of the devestation.
Around 4:00PM, after we'd finished at the WTC, we decided to split up. Some of us went back to Little Italy for some shopping, some to Central Park, and the rest of us back to the hostel for some sleep. I went with the hostel group not because I was tired but because I didn't feel like shopping and because I had gotten extremely far behind in the paper journal I've been keeping, and going back would give me an opportunity to start catching up. After everyone got back, we had supper (quesadillas prepared by members of the group), and then once eveyone was finished, we gathered together and went to the hostel's "chapel" for a closing worship service. It was the same place we met on Sunday night to reflect, and it's really more of a ballroom or something than a chapel. It's just a rectangular, carpeted room with chairs and tables. Anyway, re reflected on the week and the ways in which we had seen Christ during it, we took communion, and we were just starting closing prayers when a staff member of the hostel interrupted us, told us that we needed a reservation to use the room (though there was no sign indicating that, and it was always left open), saw our bagel and grape juice (hey, we're on a budget here), and told us no food or drink was permitted in the room (though there was no sign to indicate that, either). Melissa informed him that we were just going to pray and leave, and we wouldn't be long, so he didn't kick us out. He did, however, say that he needed to set the room up for some event tomorrow, and he did proceed to play some (not very quiet) music and do so, while we were trying to pray. On everything else, he was just doing his job, but playingthat music was unneccessary and blatantly rude. I held my tongue, reasoning that nothing I could say to him would do any good, but after we finished, Melissa gave him quite a talking-to. It was the first time I'd seen her truly angry. After we got back to the room, I observed her and Karen, the other adult, writing a letter about the incident. Hopefully, that will do some good.

March 19
Our last day in New York. We packed our things, put them in lockers provided by the hostel, and checked out in the morning, before our one and only activity for the day. Around 11:00, we walked to the Church of Saint John the Divine, a really fancy cathedral not far from our hostel. We'd originally planned to take a tour, but we decided against it because, first, it was an hour long, and second, there was a service going on, so access was rather limited. Picures were not permitted, although if church had not been in session, they would have been okay as long as no flash was involved. It was a very nice building, with huge doors and a high, arched ceiling such that there was a lot of echoing in the sanctuary. There were also a lot of extremely ornate stained glass windows, but of course I wasn't allowed to take any pictures of them. The church was a classic example of something I heard earlier in the week: There are a lot of really huge old church buildings in New York in which about 40 people worship. I don't know if the congregation at St. John was that small, but it certainly looked tiny in comparison to the size of the building.
After having a look around the cathedral, some of us wandered around and did some shopping in the area, some of us stayed on to take the tour, and I went pretty much straight back to the hostel. A few others showed up later, and we eventually started talking about going to eat. We ended up just going to nearby restaurants: I went to Subway with the other three who came back to the hostel shortly after I did. When we got back, our ride had already arrived. A day or two earlier, we'd checked into the price of the shuttle to LaGuardia Airport, and it turned out to be much more expensive than the tour guide who brought us to the hostel on the first day. We therefore had called him and asked him to show up at 1:00PM on Saturday. After he arrived, those of us with Subway sandwiches quickly ate them, and we got our luggage out of the lockers and into his van. We left ourselves plenty of time to get through security and whatever else could delay us at the airport: Our plane was scheduled to leave at 5:50. Since we had so much time, our driver decided to take us on a little tour, through a part of Central Park we hadn't seen, over the Queensboro Bridge and through a part of Queens that we hadn't seen before, either.
We arrived at LaGuardia Airport to basically no lines and a pretty quick security check, and so we found ourselves sitting and waiting for our plane by about 2:00PM. I used the time until our plane arrived to journal some more. The ride back was pretty uneventful; we just reversed our journey there. We got to Omaha around 11:00PM, back in Central Time. Some of us left from there, and the rest of us took a long van back to Lincoln.

March 20 - Postlude
Well, that was indeed quite an experience. As to my perspective, I guess time will tell. I know one thing along those lines. Although I never harbored the prejudice that all people who take charity are lazy, stupid, and/or filthy, I actually met people who broke those stereotypes, and that was good to see. I've been able to refine my view of what the priorities of charitable organizations should be. I've come to the understanding that things will happen to some people, impossible to completely prevent, that can put them in the streets. Ending poverty by prevention isn't an effective strategy on its own. When people find themselves in that situation, they need a place to turn to to fulfill their basic needs. However, charity on its own isn't the best answer. What is really helpful is helping people to get back on their feet, to return to the workforce and provide for themselves. In that way, charities should serve as a safety net so that when people are unable to support themselves, they can rely on a charitable organization to sustain them through their hard time and to help them to get out of it. Then, if social change can help by making it easier for people to support themselves or making it easier for charities to do their job, then that is its place. In that way, social change is not relied on to entirely eliminate poverty but to right the wrongs that increase it. With that, I guess I'll close this narrative. Thank you for reading; I hope you got something out of it.