Blessing a Family

This week we had the privileged of being the instrument of God in blessing a family in need. Jamaal and Michelle who have five kids have been staying with a friend over off Wye Lane. With the birth of the newest member of their family Michelle is back at work and they have gotten their own place. However all of the furniture and household items at their previous residence belonged to someone else and they had nothing to move into their new house. In one weeks time God provided enough furniture to furnish their entire new home.

I would like to thank those who donated items and are still donating items. For those of you who could not be a part of moving the furniture in I hope the pictures can convey a small sense of what was done this day. Jamaal could not stop smiling and saying "God is good, yes he is". I would like to also thank everyone who helped pack a Uhaul full of this furniture and move everything in to their new home. At times it was some dirty work and it has been a week long process to get everything together. Everyday they wake up in their new home this family and their kids will have a constant reminder of God's love and an amazing example of the obedience of those he has called to serve him.

Jamaal will be attending the Take It To The Streets Education Program starting in Feb. These classes focus on resume building and goal setting and we also work to help every member who comes through the program find a job. The second greatest commandment we were given was to "Love your neighbor as yourself" (Mark 12:30-21) and I know at this moment these neighbors feel loved. As they have friends and family over that love will be passed on. Their friends and neighbors will see, in their home the physical manifestation of the love of God carried out through his humble servants.

If you have donations you would like to make or be a part of more service projects like this please visit our website at http://ti2ts.org and go to Contact Us.


HIS humble servant,

Michael Waters
Take It To The Streets
Web Graphics/Digital Media Designer

Read more...

Burns Buddies

Group I am very proud to announce a new edition to the Take It To The Streets programs Burns Buddies. This program is a partnership with Trident United Way, Charleston County School District, Cummins & Take It To The Streets. The leadership group has been working on this partnership sense August of 2008 and has just recently underway. At this time the Take It To The Streets leadership team has been on the ground almost daily at Burns Elementary School meeting with teachers and students. We have also started building an independent website burnsbuddies.org which will allow all agencies to show case this program to their constituents. As many of you are aware this school is directly across the street from the Take It To The Streets Family Field Day Field as well as it shares the parking lot with the JB center were we hold our Young Leader and Work On The Street Program. At this time we have identified several teachers that we are going to be partnering with from 1st to 5th grade. All of these classes currently have Take It To The Streets children enrolled in them. The kids are SUPER excited to see us in the school as well as having the opportunity to eat lunch with us. This partnership gives Take It To The Streets an unique advantage point to how the children are living out what they are being taught on Sundays. Often time the feedback provided by their teacher is the most detailed and impactful.

As it isn’t a surprise to many of you our Take It To The Streets children are struggling in school, some of which are three grade levels behind. There are numerous behavior issues and at time the kids can be known as a handful. I believe this is why God has put them in all of our lives, and it is obvious that they need his help to make it through these early childhood development years. At this time we are open to volunteers participating in the Burns Buddies program (Lunch and Learn 11:30 to 12:30 M-F). This program is not for beginner volunteers and all volunteers will be fully vetted prior to having access to the school. As you can understand this is a tremendous opportunity for both us and the children, God Bless and have a great day!

Connor

Read more...

Servicing the Community

This outreach was a special outreach because on this Saturday we had a full fledge service project where we cut down trees in Mrs. Alma’s yard, who lived on Ranger Drive. Mrs. Alma has always been encouraging to us since we began our Neighborhood Fellowship two years ago. Her husband accepted Jesus into his heart about 6 months before he died. He was such a joyous person. This past Saturday we saw the vision of true neighborhood fellowship come alive as two brothers Quan and Jahleel ages 8 and 9 volunteered to help us with Mrs. Alma’s yard. They truly enjoyed helping out. The bothers were able to walk around with a leaf blower and Quan got to use the chain saw, which he was very excited to do. They probably had never seen these tools before, but they trusted us and they served with their small Take It To The Streets shirts on.

These two brothers had been coming out to the field for a full year and they have been able to get closer to many of our volunteers. As Myself, Brooks, and Bergen worked the chain saw, pressure washer and extended saw, our two little brothers continued to help and they enjoyed every minute- they took a few breaks and we could see them being kids and jumping on the trailer as they said hi to guys walking by that they knew. I could tell that some of the guys walking were up to no good- maybe they were drug dealers. It does not really matter, because our two young volunteers had joy in their hearts as they served Jesus. What was very exciting was when Mrs. Alma saw the house and how it was pressure washed- all she could say was “God Bless” “Love You” and “God Bless”. All the volunteers were certainly blessed because the King sees all things and Jesus was looking down on everyone and smiling. That is the glory of God when light can begin to shine in a place that was otherwise dark, literally and figuratively.

~Jesse Williams

Read more...

Take It To The Streets Christmas

First I want to say thank you to all of the wonderful people who helped make this moment happen. Last Sunday we had a number of people come together to give of themselves to put together shoe boxes full of toys for the kids. We had a good system of wrapping going on and got a good look at the wrapping skills of our friends. For those of you who were not able to be there to hand them out your generosity went miles in making this Christmas a happy one for a lot of children, many of whom would not have had any presents under the tree were it not for your gifts of love. Without Walls Ministry also lended a hand by donating extra shoe boxes they had to help us meet our need for the growing number of kids that are coming to Field Day now.

Yesterday we handed out presents to all the children at Field Day and the response was overwhelming joy. We did not announce that we would be doing this to the neighborhood but rather made it a surprise. Some of the kids tore into their gifts right away and were already playing with the toys that they were given. A lot of presents came with kids books that told different stories from the Bible and I saw children comparing which book they got to another "I got Daniel and the Lion what did you get?" There was a huge moment of love as they all sat and open their presents, in which all of their differences and squabbles were put aside and the worries of school and their home life were forgotten. A few of the kids did not open their presents, when I asked one little girl why she was not opening her gift she said, "Cuz I want to put it under my tree just like this." Though they all know the reason for Christmas with a resounding answer was "Jesus", there was joy they experienced in the physical manifestation of the love of Jesus Christ carried to them through the hearts of volunteers who helped make this happen.

Read more...

The Greatest Gift

Group it is great to be able to report such a wonderful story, at such a wonderful time of the year. This past week end we got to participate in witnessing a child receive the greatest Christmas present of his life. At this time I would like to introduce you all to Eddy Ancrum a fifth grader (10 years old) from Burns Elementary School. Eddy is a wonderful kid often characterized as a gentle giant. He has a warm heart and has been participating in Take It To The Streets Family Field Day since the very beginning. Eddy lives about two blocks from the field and is always the first one there and the last one to leave. He is not hard to miss when he is at the field he is often found handing out drinks and filling cups full of ice for all the kids, he takes this job very seriously (don’t mess with Eddy).

Each weekend we take a van load of children to the North Charleston Dream Center for the Noon Church service. About a month ago Eddy who has never gone to church nor anyone in his family that I know of showed interest in attending. I told Eddy if he would like to join us to walk to two blocks to Alex’s Restaurant and if he was there at 10:30 then I would buy him pancakes. So somehow this message got mixed up and he arrived at 8:30 and he waited for two hours for us to arrive. He walked up to me and said “hey man where have you been”, at that moment I knew he was all in. So last week at Church Eddy told Kim Wiggins that he wanted to be Baptized! As you can image we were elated. As the week went on the leadership team talked about the logistics of Eddy being Baptized. On Saturday in true Eddy fashion he arrived at the Field early in 45 degree raining weather, however today he was going to step it up a notch. Instead of running the drink station Eddy wanted to be apart of bring his community an eternal supply of water. Eddy decided he wanted to join Matt Vegel and hand out food and pray for his neighbors in the community. Five teams set out for Neighborhood Fellowship and the last team to return, you guessed it Eddy and Matt. Eddy was so excited he did an interview (Travis Evens Videographer extraordinary) along with Matt he shared the days blessings.

The next morning Sunday it was raining and quite a miserable day. We pulled into the parking lot at Alex’s at 10:30 and at the first table as we walked in Eddy was sitting waiting for us. As I sat down I was reminded that I owed him a bible, so I went to the trunk of my car and had the glorious honor of signing his first bible. As I gave it to Eddy he asked me if he was going to get Baptized today (I love his persistence)? I didn’t even have time to answer the question as Eddy was so excited to share a dream he had the night before. Eddy said “I had a dream last night and Jesus was in it”! I said wow really what did he look like? Eddy said “he was a tall white man, with long white hair and a long white beard, and he was glowing”. I said what did he do? Eddy said “Jesus asked me to help him, he was chopping wood and I was to grab the logs and he would split them in half”. As you can image all the hairs stood up on my body and I as well as everyone else that was sitting with us was blown away. All of this coming from a ten year old WOW! At that moment I knew we had to figure out away for him to be Baptized TODAY!

As we got to Church we checked to see if the Baptism tank was full, it was not. So I went to Eddy and told him that we don’t have a place to perform the Baptism indoors so we are going to have to do it outside, where it was raining and cold. Eddy said “I don’t care”. So in typical Take It To The Streets style we packed up all the kids and a handful of volunteers and headed to my neighborhood pool (which was closed and crazy cold 50 degrees). While Eddy was changing into his bathing suit he was jumping up and down, there was an excitement on his face I have never seen before. All the kids lined up along the pool with the volunteers as Eddy, Jesse and I braved the ice cool water. At this point the pictures tell the rest of the story. I hope that this story warms your heart this holiday season. Know that there is hope being planted in North Charleston and children that from the outside may look and seem poor and deprived are some of the richest children of all! Welcome my Brother Eddy Ancrum a REAL M.O.G (Man Of God) to the family!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The pictures are in time order, Check out his eyes in the last photo – Look out Eddy is Coming!

Connor McIntyre

Read more...

December Newsletter

The December newsletter is hot off the press take a look here or download the full pdf here.

Read more...

Thanksgiving in the Park

Last week Take It To The Streets had the pleasure of supporting Without Walls Ministry with their Thanksgiving Outreach. It was an incredible experience spending time on a holiday all about giving thanks, reaching out to those who are less fortunate and giving them a reason to be thankful. We helped to serve over 50 turkeys, 30 hams, and all the other traditional thanksgiving trimmings to many Charlestonians who had nowhere else to go on Thanksgiving day. By midday over 500 blankets and jackets had been distributed to the guests. It was heart touching to see how many people came out to willingly sacrifice time away from their families on a holiday to touch the lives those who had no family to spend it with.

As I walked around trying to capture the joyfulness of the occasion on film I felt a great peace in knowing that if Christ were present in the flesh that day that he would have been sitting at those very same tables giving hope to the "least of these". I can only hope that everyone who is a part of my life gets a chance during this holiday season to feel that same joy and peace. I know that in the act of serving pure of heart, that the server is blessed as much if not more so those than those being served. You may just find that in the act of changing the life of another it is you who are being changed.

To see all the pictures from the days events please visit http://photos.takeittothestreetsministry.org/

Read more...