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

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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.

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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

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December Newsletter

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

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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/

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Garbage Day!

Garbage Day!

Group every once and a while you get to see a dream come true, this happened for me on Saturday. After the day and reflecting with Jesse we concluded that is was easily one of our top five Field Days of all time! So what did we do, well how about I tell you what we didn’t do first, we didn’t set up any chairs, we didn’t break out any games, we didn’t even prepare a lesson mainly because we didn’t know how the kids were going to respond. As the kids all arrived we gathered them in a circle and told them our plan. The plan for the day was to serve their community and pick up trash for one hour. We broke the kids up into teams of five with one volunteer per team. The teams left the field in multiple locations armed with bags, gloves and a determination that was unexpected.

I was leading the Ranger Rd team along with Jesse. Starting at the Watson’s house and heading North with Jaleal, Kateria and Katiasha we hit the ground running. What I hoped for happened, the kids were excited and even racing at times to pick up the garbage “that’s mine, he’s to fast”. Not only was it great to see the kids doing something for their neighborhood but to see the faces of their neighbors in disbelief was priceless. God opened so many doors for discipline on this day from being a good steward of one surroundings, to the poisoning effects of alcohol and cigarettes. At the end of the day I was so proud of the kids and better yet they were proud of themselves they looked, acted and were leaders in their community, leading from the front. God is good and no matter if I write this story 100 times it will never convey the beauty of this day.

Connor Mcintyre

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United Live!

What a weekend we had last week! For all of those who were able to attend United Live WOW! Thanks to the volunteers from Take It To The Streets bring out 20 plus volunteers way to represent! For those of you who were not able to attend, no worries because we are in the process of planning another event January 22^nd 2010. I had the pleasure of busing in 10 kids from Ranger Rd that evening. They were so excited, you should have seen their face’s Zarion said “Man this is dope our church is got a Rap concert”, this was from a ten year old. The night was awesome it was like having a personal Rap concert for our family. The light stage and sound equipment was off the hook, and our very own Martha Martin did an incredible job painting the backdrop. Real and Sasha blew the roof of the Dream Center “Get it Get it”, and Pastor Ben laid down a powerful message.

It was so fun to see the kids personalities come alive as well as come together. Many of you have heard this story but as the concert came to a close the Take It To The Streets kids took over. They all rushed the stage as the DJ played their favorite song “Joyful Noise by Flame” it was as if they just drank 15 cans of Red Bull. All the volunteers crowed around the stage to cheer them on as De Angelo was stringing his air guitar, and Zarion was on the his back spinning is circles, Quan was sliding on the top of his head as his brother Jaleal was pulling a one handed handstand. There is no other word for this but “Freaking Amazing” I guess that is two words. As much time I have spent with these kids I had no idea how talented they were, it was as if we are watching an audition of So You Think You Can Dance. You could see the joy and disbelieve on all the volunteers faces. The kids absolutely loved it! The volunteers would cheer loader the kids would dance harder; we all knew that this night the kids would never forget. It wasn’t until thirty minutes after the concert had ended, all the other kids had left and most of the volunteers had gone that the DJ was wore out and had to stop the music and the TI2TS had to get off the stage. As I said before they were excited, almost to the point of madness. The kids insisted on not leaving so they for another thirty minutes they broke down the stage and wrap up the two thousand feet of cord and wires. It was an awesome privilege to witness this event and have a front seat in his glory and splendor.

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Take It To The Street Christmas Cards

Christmas should be a time for giving and enjoying quality time with family and friends, but all too often, it turns into a season of high stress and last minute panic gift buying. Why not do something totally different this year by giving charitable gifts to loved ones and close friends? A charitable donation is tax deductible, eco-friendly (no expensive wrapping paper required) and donations are also perfect as unique corporate gifts for clients. Make a donation on behalf of someone you love and we will give you a unique Christmas Card to give to that individual. Inside of the card will be a certificate letting that person know that you donated on their behalf and what their gift will be used for. For those of you out of state or away for the holidays we can mail you the card and envelope for you to address and mail out and for those of you who we all see on a regular basis you can request to get yours in person from Connor.

To purchase a Take It To The Streets Christmas Card click here.

$20.00 Sponsors one day of Neighborhood Fellowship = Door to Door meals and prayer for 30 families

$50.00 Sponsors one day of Children Sunday School = Transportation of 25 children to Church and all day activities

$100.00 Sponsors one day of Field Day = 50 children receive food, sports activities, crafts, worship and bible school

$200.00 Sponsors one student in Word On The Street Program = six week training course on resume building, interview skills, goal setting and 100.00 voucher for interview outfit

$500.00 Sponsors one Laptop for Mentor ship Program = After school mentorship program helps students with there homework and develops improved study skills as well as bible study and community building.

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Thanksgiving in the Park

On Thanksgiving Day we will be partnering with Without Walls Ministry to help serve Thanksgiving Dinner to the community. Last year we helped out with this event and it was absolutely amazing. Over 200 people showed up to help show the love of Christ on this holiday. The event takes place from 9am - 1pm at Hampton Park downtown. Volunteers who wish to drive themselves can park at the Food Lion a few blocks away and walk to the event or we will be meeting at the field behind Alex's Restaurant on Dorchester Road and car pooling to the event. Volunteers need to be there early so the car pool will be leaving at 8 a.m. Please remember to wear your Take It To The Streets t-shirts, maybe over a long sleeve shirt as it might be a little chilly in the morning.

We are asking each volunteer to prepare one dish or desert to bring with them to the event. If you can make something please post a response so we know what we will be able to take and we can let Without Walls know. I will be making my special lemon based Turkey :D If you are unable to attend or can not prepare food and still like to help out you can make a finacial donation for the event please contact Connor Mcintyre at 843.614.2307. We will also be collecting warm clothes, gloves, blankets, etc between now and the event to give out to he community. If you have any of these items please bring them to Field Day any Saturday between now and the event or on the day of. As you can tell the weather is getting cold at night and your extra blanket collecting dust in a closet may serve as a constant reminder of the love of Christ for some individual.

More information can be found here
Directions to the event can be found here

Posted by Michael Waters

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Bringing The Gospel: The Good News- a sneak preview

You may have seen this in email Form- but we are very proud of this News Letter: The first newsletter produced by an official News Letter Action Sub Team.

Praise God for all you are doing! All for the glory of God. Please share this blog with a friend and comment on anything you are thinking or that can be used to better our community and our world. Check out our web site at ti2ts.org and let us know if you want a full news letter sent to you. We want to thank Mike Waters for his co-service to the Lord and our community- he has been diligent with his time and abilities.
Thanks, Jesse: A servant of the King.

Check out the full News Letter here

Posted by Jesse Williams

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Special Halloween Field Day

This past Saturday we held a special Halloween Field Day for the kids. The goal of the event was to provide a safe environment for the kids to come out in their costumes and trick or treat. The event may have gone off too well. Imagine 40-50 kids on a sugar high and you get the idea. The volunteers and kids alike showed up in costume and had plenty of activities to take part in. We had fishing for prizes as well as the classic boxes marked brains, eyeballs, and guts, of coarse filled with jell-o and grapes. There was face painting and costumes provided for the kids who did not have one of their own. We had treats to go around from pumpkin cookies to Halloween style donuts and of coarse plenty of candy.

The kids were given a safety lesson and safe trick or treating practices like letting your parents look through your candy first and don't eat candy that is already open. Along with the safety lesson was a biblical lesson with jack-o-lanterns. All of the kids got their very own kid size pumpkin and were shown how like making a jack-o-lantern Jesus first removes all the ick or sin from inside of us, then carves us in his image, and finally places the Holy Spirit inside of us to be a light to the rest of the world.

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Huge turnout for Neighborhood Fellowship

This past Saturday was awesome! We had four teams out in the Neighborhood. There were approximately 20 volunteers for Outreach. God provided extra food to give out this week. The volunteers handed out the October Newsletter, as well as a flyer for the Trunk or Treat event next Saturday. It was a blessed day! Our team in particular prayed for a family whose uncle was just diagnosed with Cancer. We also prayed for Ms. Elma who is one of the elderly ladies we love to visit with. We met a young man that is interested in making a change in his life. We shared the opportunities that Take It To The Streets offers to better his education and find employment.

It has been such a blessing to see all the new volunteers come back in awe of what God is doing in the neighborhood. Like the saying goes, "Bless someone, and you will be blessed more." It is true!

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Outreach On 10-17

Today's outreach was packed full of good lessons and good time to fellowship. We had about 30 kids come out thanks to our street team who walked around and told the kids about our filed day. We had a mixture of new and old attendees and the new kids had to get used to who we were and had to adjust their behavior accordingly.

We learned some valuable lessons as volunteers. We have to step up to the plate and begin to mentor the kids who simply need the love of a father figure where one lacking. We ended the filed day early because of a decision by Martha, our field day coordinator. The kids were told to come back next week with better behavior and respect. With this we pose two questions: will you help mentor a kid 2. What ideas can we put together to create community with the adults and parents.

Any thoughts of current environment and possible improvement.

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Convoy Of Hope

This past Saturday Take It To The Streets partnered with 25 other organizations and 75 churches to help host this years Charleston Convoy of Hope. It was a very humbling experience. I literally felt like I was in another world all day as watched over 5000 of my fellow charlestonians come out seeking aid. Volunteers arrived at 7 a.m to start setting up for this all day event. Take It To The Streets worked with Guest Services all day to help those 5000+ people get in to the event in a timely fashion. We handed out water and drinks to people as they were waiting in line in 90 degree weather. Some of our volunteers handed out games to the kids to help keep them in good spirits and walked around blowing bubbles with them. Our volunteers walked around and talked with those waiting in line and helped direct them through the front gates as the received information on all the different offerings Convoy had to offer.

There was a tent for everything. One tent was offering free haircuts and giving hygeine products. Another tent was giving out free shoes and washing the feet of the guests. There was a tent for health services and screening complete with a free chiropratic check up. There was a tent for job services where employers from the low country came to help those in need find employment. There was an incredbible kid zone that was like a mini fair unto itself. The kid zone had jump castles, clowns, face painting, cotton candy, and so much more. There was live entertainment all day from music acts, to poetry readings, and even a wrestling for jesus ring. Perhaps the most important tent of them all was the prayer tent where 3000 bibles were handed out 4,500 people were prayed for and 300 people came to know Christ for the first time. Right now you should be saying Amen as you read this :D If you would like to see more pictures from the event please visit our website at http://ti2ts.org or join us on facebook. If you have special God size moments from Convoy of Hope please share them in the comments section. Couldn't be everywhere at once and it would be nice to hear some of the ways God showed up.

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Children Lifting Up Children

This past Saturday Take It To The Streets finished our teaching series at Field Day on character building words. This week we gave the kids TI2TS bucks (which they get for good behavior and Christ like actions, that can be redeemed for ice cream or other items at the end of each month) that they had to give to someone else. Each kid had to give away his bucks to someone else for being nice or helping out in some way. The response to this was overwhelming. The kids could not say enough good things about their friends. In some cases they got annoyed that we did not have enough time for them to continue praising one another. The looks on their friends faces as they would lift each other up in praise was priceless. It was an amazing thing to witness and see the impact that we are making in the lives of these kids.

The days activities were also a blast as you can see from the pictures. Kevin and Jan Herr organized a relay race for the kids Double Dare style. After the first race there was a resounding cry of "Can We Do It Again" Thanks to Kevin and Jan for organizing last weekends activity from the pictures it is obvious that the kids had a blast. The full set of pictures can be seen on our Facebook page and I will be uploading them to our website soon. This Saturday there will be no Field Day as TI2TS will be supporting Convoy of Hope. More information on that can also be found on our webpage as well as Facebook or by googleing Convoy of Hope Charleston. I look forward to posting multiple stories from this weekends event as well lots of pictures for those who won't be able to make it.

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HAPPY Birthday!

I think we all can remember our favorite birthday as a child. For me it was my seventh birthday and it was at a roller rink. This birthday was extra special not because of any of the gifts (I cant remember one of them) but who was there. All of my friends from the third grade especially my girlfriend Erica. It is the people that make birthdays special and memorable. This weekend Take It To The Streets had the awesome privilege of celebrating Zirons (aka CJ’s) seventh birthday. The “Praise Warriors” got a giant cupcake/football shaped birthday cake along with a card and a few small gifts. Ziron sat down on a folding chair in the middle of a huge circle of volunteers and kids as we all sung Happy Birthday, all he could do was blush. Immediately after that we opened the card and I got the opportunity to read it to the group (see expression in picture). In the picture you are not seeing a child’s expression of how cool his present is but how much he values the love of his family and friends “priceless”. This picture is incredibly important to me and let me tell you why. Earlier in the week, Thursday to be exact I got a chance to meet up with Ziron and his family. Thursday was Ziron’s official Birthday and his family was going through some really difficult financial problems. I knew that Ziron’s family was not able to throw a Birthday Party or even celebrate this glorious day, at that moment is when I remembered my seventh birthday party (the one at the roller rink). This picture is “priceless” and a testimony to Gods love poured out to his child through our “Praise Warriors”, I believe Jesus was smiling just as big at that moment.

Connor

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Neighborhood Fellowship

Neighborhood Fellowship allows us to meet residents where they are. The Lord has opened up some amzing doors to tell families about Jesus off of Dorchester Road. We push forward no matter what to show the residents that God loves them despite their curcumstances or surroundings. We do Neighborhood Fellowship on the 2nd and 4th Saturday of the month. In fact, we are going out into the neighborhood this Saturday- meeting at the field behind Alex's restaurant at 3713 Dorchester Road at 1:30 pm. By 2:00 pm we will be hitting the streets passing out food, praying with residents, and showing love to the sick and down trodden. We have been blessed every week we go into the neighborhood.

Last year we visited an older lady every time we did outreach. The lady was 99 years old and her 60 year old son would see us waking down the street. The son would call us over and say "don't pass our house". The mother was laying on a bed in the middle of the living room. We would bring her food and she would walk and put it in the kitchen. Later on she would just be laying in the bed and she would say "let's pray". She said "I know I am going to heaven, so I am not worried". She loved to pray with us. One Saturday we went by her house and she was dead- her son said she passed away. We know this is one lady that will go to heaven and she blessed us with her willingness to pray and invite us in the house. We hope she is praising Jesus in heaven and asking Jesus to bless Take It To The Streets and our our team. In fact I am sure she is praising Jesus and one day we will she her in heaven in her revived body where she is not confined to the bed. This lady who was 99 years old saw the power of the Holy Spirit at work. There is now power greater than the power of God at work within us. It is the type of power that can move mountains. We have so many stories just like this of the Church being the church outside the building- Let's continue to Take It To The Streets.

A servant of the Lord- Jesse

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Kids stepping it up at Field Day

Today TI2TS saw a major rise in volunteers, all under the age of 16! A new tool was implemented today inform of the Take It To The Street Buck. This is reward system that we are hoping to use to encourage Christ-like behavior and it was a major success. The kids were in a frenzy about these new dollars. We had a trash pick up crew and a line leader (which helped out with line organization immensely.) One of the highlights of the day was watching a line of kids that looked more like worker ants carrying field day supplies back into the supply the closet. They were so into helping that at the end of it all we had to remind them that they were getting rewarded. They just enjoyed feeling like they were a big part of the ministry. God really showed up today in these kids. What was so amazing its that these kids were living out the lesson all day which was:
1 Corinthians 9:24

"Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize."

Our field day activity was a ballon race which is in the above picture but the Spirit of God was in all that those kids did today! What a wonderful day that the Lord has made!

Martha Martin Childrens Ministry Coordinator

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