With the launch of the new Seer Outfitters site approaching, here is what we sent them from the Mission. The idea of telling stories of people living uncommon lives, in that they are truly loving and serving their neighbors with no expectation of return, is a beautiful thing.

Parable:
One day while wandering, I came across three bricklayers. I asked the first bricklayer what he was doing.”Laying bricks” he told me.I asked the second what he was doing.“Making a brick wall,” he told me.I asked the third.“Building a cathedral” he explained. —-April 18th, 2006, Philadelphia.  I pulled into the parking lot of the Helping Hand Rescue Mission and saw 3 inner city children playing football.  I didn’t know if I was allowed to talk to them; it hadn’t been long since the grandmother cursed me out on my walk through the neighborhood when I introduced myself.The July before, our group of young suburban adults had come to this segregated part of Philadelphia to pray about starting a church somewhere else in the city.  We needed a place to meet to talk about living our faith and starting some kind of mercy ministry, and I was volunteering at the Mission, so we met on the front stairs.I wasn’t thinking about that at all, or our prayers for direction, as I ignored the curios stares of the children and yelled, “Throw me the ball.”A few spirals later and I saw kids coming from all directions; it was as if they had been waiting for us.  That game of catch morphed into a wild game of whiffle ball which became a swollen ministry that has jumped over the 6 year mark.
It has been a half decade of thrills and spills that we could not have asked for or imagined here at the Mission.  We are not here a project or a ministry; this has become a family where we want the best for our children. We run afterschool programs, kids’ church, a soccer academy, and take trips throughout the year.  Our young people grow up in rough circumstances, and we want to offer them every advantage, and to ensure that these are some of the best years of their lives.It has not always been a fun game of catch; we have had 2 neighborhood boys murdered, both unsolved, and worry that rough rides remain ahead for our at-risk youth.  If this was an easy area to work in, someone would have done it already.We do it under the Christian umbrella that reminds us to ‘love our neighbors’ as we extend to ‘love our neighborhood’.
As I look back on how it started, I think that it is fair to say our wonderful volunteers were laying bricks in those early months.  Currently, we have a remarkable program that is loved by the neighborhood, and it is clear that we have been constructing a wall.Perhaps in another 5 years, we will be able to see that we were really building a cathedral the whole time.