This is taken from the Team Nicaragua blog and it was written by Jennifer Zilly. This is what happened on their ATL on the streets of Atlanta last Saturday.
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Dread washed over me when I heard that our first team bonding activity would take place on the icy city streets of Atlanta. Earlier that day I flew into the Atlanta airport to meet the eight girls that I will be spending the next four months with. Prior to departing for Nicaragua on January 19, however, we would be staying in Georgia for a few days of training.
Exhausted and unprepared for the freezing cold temperature, I hit the dark streets with my new sisters wearing only a thin hoodie and my favorite pair of jeans. The only directions we were given were to hand out sack lunches to homeless people and see if there were any hurting people roaming the streets that we could pray for. Our wild night of numb fingers and toes began with a lively encounter with Jimmy Jackson, a middle-aged homeless man who joyfully shared some of his songs with us under Atlanta’s night sky. After that, several of my teammates felt that we should intentionally look for a woman who needed comfort and prayer, so we ran up and down the streets asking male passersby where the nearest strip club was. Roughly two hours later we landed at Magic City, a smoky strip club several blocks away from our starting location at the homeless shelter. We were ultimately denied entrance into the club but were able to pray outside the building for all the women who are trapped within an occupation and a system that devalues who they are.
I would have never voluntarily chosen to escapade up and down unknown streets with people I barely knew in order to try to meet physical and spiritual needs, but God’s plan for us rarely involves the comfort of security and predictability…
