Meet Joe

Meet Joe.

I met Joe this past week while chaperoning an inner-city mission trip to New York City with a group of teens.

We went with a group called Center for Student Missions. We spent the week learning about the city and serving in various capacities, like soup kitchens and other organizations that serve those less fortunate in urban areas.

One of the most challenging activities we faced was called "neighborhood immersion". We were sent off into a specific grid of lower Manhattan with a list of tasks to complete. The list included finding a homeless shelter; a soup kitchen; interviewing a resident of the neighborhood; finding the average price of an apartment; prices at restaurants. You get the idea. Then there was this challenge: with the money provided ($2 per person) find a way to meet a person's need and feed yourselves for the evening as well.

That's where our team:

met Joe.

We weren't sure how we were going to meet the need of a homeless person AND feed ourselves. But as leaders, it was our job to sit back and let the students be creative.

And that's exaclty what they did. As we worked our way through the tasks, they were thinking through how we could meet a need.

And then we saw Joe. And they went into into action.

In a short time we were sitting on 7th Ave in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, sharing an order of Chicken Chow Mein with Joe. One order, that is. Between 7 of us. Oh, and we also got him two egg rolls.

We sat on the sidewalk with him and listened to his story. An Iraq war vet. Not physically injured, but psychologically devastated by the war. Psychologically paralyzed it seemed.

We sat on the sidewalk with Joe, in front of Whole Foods Market. In the shadow of Greenpeace volunteers accosting passerbys yelling, "Do you love polar bears? Do you love the environment?"

Joe had sat on the sidewalk before we arrived, mostly unnoticed. But when we sat with him, people noticed. And they stared. And they laughed. And they stared. They almost seemed disgusted that we were sitting with him, sharing a meal.

Joe mostly talked, while his plate full of rice and chow mein got colder and colder. I think each of us felt like maybe we should leave so he'd eat, and not feel like he needed to talk. But for some reason we sat and listened.

Later that evening, one group member articulated why it was we just sat there. We all realized that the need we were meeting was not the food. It was listening. It was noticing him and bringing dignity to the person that he is. This task was about that.