Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Our Adventure in the Northeast - Part IV

We've reached the halfway point in our trip, and it's starting to show. We had another great day of meetings and ministry, but we're tired. Our day started out early, though, so it's warranted. 

We left Providence early this morning and made good time to New Haven. I was expecting one of two things of New Haven, and neither of them was true. First, I thought it would be much more of a suburban town than a big-city kind of place. Well, it's a big-city kind of place. My second option was that it would be a lot like Providence, but that's not really the case either. Both of these cities are similar in size to Fayetteville in population, but they look so different. They're very business-looking, right off of the interstate with lots of high-rise buildings. There's definitely that "inner-city" downtown feel in New Haven, really more so than in Providence.

We arrived in town early for our lunch meeting, so we spent a bit of time driving around the downtown area. It's an atmosphere that is so very unfamiliar to me, and it's hard to know how to react to it. The Yale campus is right in the middle of downtown, but it stands out significantly amongst the high-rise businesses and condos. The buildings are old, classical and full of character. It's really a beautiful little community to itself right in the middle of a big city area. 

We met for lunch with Cat, who is a Young Life coordinator here in New Haven. She is a Yale graduate and has been a resident of the area for the last four years, so she was able to give us a lot of helpful insight into the community as a whole. She expressed that the university and community don't get along well at all, outside of the fact that Yale is the largest employer in the city. Many of the students never leave campus, as our own team members experienced when asking students for simple directions within the city. She also explained the huge diversity that is experienced in the town, as you can find mansions and projects within a couple of blocks of each other. Another big thing she shared with us is that this community does not at all value community. In fact, she said it's a concept completely foreign to many of them. She said that the parents of some of her kids might be neighbors but don't know each other at all. There is a significant need to teach and encourage community living in this area.

We had another hour in between meetings, so we spread out and surveyed the downtown area as much as we could. As was explained in our meeting later, the people here will rarely make eye contact with you on the street, and will hardly ever say hello . . . even if you say hello to them. We all experienced that in our brief time there. We were able to make a couple of contacts during that time, including one woman (a lifetime New Haven resident) who just lost her job and requested prayer from our team. 

Our final meeting was with Greg, an elder at Trinity Baptist Church in New Haven, and a representative of a Christian campus organization at Yale. He shared the story of his church, which meets in the downtown area and has a congregation of 200, and gave some good insight into the best areas to consider planting a church in the future. We were blessed to pray with him for the town and for God's direction as we seek His will for that or another area with UBC. 

Tomorrow will begin early with a breakfast meeting, and will be another full day. Pray that our team can rest well again and that we can all remain healthy for the duration of the trip. Brant will be joining us tomorrow evening, so pray also for his safe travel as he drives up from the New Jersey area.

Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of the New Haven area today, but I was able to get the pictures from previous days to post correctly, so go back and check those out!

Today's only picture...and the view from our hotel window

No comments:

Post a Comment