Today was a great day! We were sad not to see our friends that we have made at Soul City Church, but we were all excited to visit Wheaton College. We rode the red line on the “L” a couple of stops and then hopped off to walk to the Metra train station. We were running a few minutes behind…so we actually ended up running to make our train! The “L” trains come every 7 minutes. The Metra trains come every hour…so it was imperative not to miss this one. We were quite the group…38 people running through the train station. I’m sure that was a real blessing to everyone else!
Once we hopped on the train, we settled into our seats for the 45 minute ride out to the suburbs. It was remarkable to see how much the city changed outside the train windows as we moved out from the city. By the time we arrived at the College Avenue exit in Wheaton, we were ready to check out the college. Our first stop was the football field where Mr. Masters gave a devotion based on Romans 13:12 and talked about how we as Christians have an opportunity to bring the light to an otherwise dark and hopeless world. Mr. Masters also shared some of his own experiences as a student at Wheaton and some things that had been particularly meaningful to him during his time on campus.
We visited the Student Center on campus to hang out for a few minutes on our way to chapel. Chapel is held on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday each week at Wheaton. They take attendance in chapel and students are only allowed so many skips per semester. When we arrived for chapel, Mr. Masters showed us where to sit. Because they take attendance in chapel based on assigned seats, we actually sat in the seats that belonged to current students. Mr. Masters told us that would make us very popular because those students would be counted present just because we were sitting in their seats. Some students walked up and thanked us, some students asked kids to move to their seat so that they could be counted present, and some just laughed. It was sort of like a service project to Wheaton kids who wanted to skip chapel! Our kids got a big kick out of that.
The next funny moment came when the speaker was introduced. The adults had consulted the Wheaton chapel schedule in advance and knew what the topic would be and decided we would wait to see how the kids reacted. They were having a special series on Sexuality and Holiness. I wish you could have seen the looks on their faces…definitely some interesting comments afterwards! The speaker was good and I know we’ll talk more about that at our team meeting tonight…what a blast!
After chapel we went on a tour of the campus led by an Admissions rep that happened to be one of Mr. Masters’ best friends from college. He gave us a great tour and we learned a lot about Wheaton. That school has a tremendous legacy of training missionaries and pastors including: Billy Graham, John Piper, Jim Elliot, and Nate Saint. Their student center was named after Todd Beamer (of 9/11 fame), also a Wheaton alum. The admissions rep went on and on about the family atmosphere on campus at Wheaton. It was cool to hear a few of our NCCS kids talking about the fact that we are used to that at NCCS!
The tour was followed by lunch…always a favorite with this crew! They enjoyed the fact that lunch was all you can eat…and they did! After lunch we spent some more time in the Student Center and visiting the bookstore. From there we rode the train back into the city and jumped the “L” back to the hotel. This evening was another night to check out restaurants in the neighborhood of our hotel and enjoy hanging out together. My crew ventured out to Gino’s East for more Chicago deep dish pizza. Other groups went to Hard Rock, Chipotle, and Subway. After dinner, one group went for ice cream, but everyone else has been hanging out at the hotel relaxing.
We will have our group meeting in a bit and recap the day. Tomorrow will be an early morning as we hope to finish the projects at Soul City Church and spend a good chunk of the day with the kids from Brown Elementary School. Tomorrow evening we are going to tour the Art Institute of Chicago and then enjoy our last team dinner at Ed Debevic’s..a famous Chicago restaurant. It is hard to believe that 24 hours from now we will all be packing up. Our goal is to make the most of the time here that we have to invest in the people and encourage the staff of Soul City Church. We are having a great trip!
Megan Strange
