Why do we go? Every team member had a different reason for going. But in general:

• we went because Christ sends us to make disciples and to become disciples.
  
• we went to listen to people who suffer severely, to learn their story, and to understand who they are.
  
• we went to learn about ourselves and each other; to tell our own story, and to learn the stories of our companions.
  
• we went to find Christ and to let Christ find us.

What do we experience there? The following accounts may give you a clue why we go back.

Two eyes peered out from between the slats of the chair.

A tiny hand gripped the cold metal bar as he watched.

His questioning stare surveyed the room, searching for an answer.

When he realized I’d been watching him, his gaze fixed on me,

and held me there, motionless.

Intent and accusing, he read my tears.

He knew.

He knew we were leaving him.

As I looked deeper, I saw pain in his big brown eyes.

I saw the hurt and anger because we couldn’t stay-

and would never come back.

But we weren’t the first that had ever said

"goodbye."

"These children can’t be contained on a piece of paper. Since I can’t define them, please see them./ Look closely at these pictures. Please see their smiles. Please understand that behind each smile is a story that can’t be written yet, because the ending isn’t clear. I can’t write about them because they mean so much to me, and because writing about them makes me think about what comes next for them. Even though they deserve more, their futures aren’t bright..."

Nancy - age 16

"A little boy walked out of the shelter carrying a basketball half the size of him. When I reached down to get the ball–to see if he wanted to play–he backed up and said "Mine!" Not that great of a start. I sat down beside him and talked awhile, feeling like I wasn’t getting anywhere. He started to walk away, looked back at me and said, "C’mon." Gladly, I followed. Over the next days, Devanie and I played together a majority of the time, but whenever I got too close to something he wanted he would always yell, "Mine!" The last day there, I picked him up and said goodbye. Just then another boy came up and hugged me. Devanie saw this, grabbed me around the neck and yelled, "Mine!"

Kyle - age 16

"Images of Chicago Hope 3 are many: serving men and women, some wasted by AIDS, who have waited their turn for a sustaining food allotment at Open Hand; four hours of exuberant worship with a congregation rejoicing in their hope in Christ; assisting setting up, feeding and cleaning up after a hundred and more hungry and homeless people; packing sixteen hundred family food boxes in four hours; meeting the cautious children at St. Elizabeth’s...the hard part about the Chicago trip is not in the going. It is in the leaving..."

"Every night we would gather to tell the stories of the day. We had to. There was no other way to deal with the heartbreak and the joy."

Andy Rutrough-Pastor

St. Thomas Lutheran Church