It was 10 pm and my first night ever in New York City. My teen missions team was doing dishes in the hot kitchen after a meal at the New York School of Urban Ministry. 3 other teams were with us for the night, preparing to fly out of JFK the next morning. They were relaxing and bonding. Laughing and lingering long over the shared adventures of the day. I was with kitchen nazis, who were watching over us, making sure we didn't slack on our duties.

My first hour of missions and I had already learned the truth. Missions is not all glamour and exoticness. It's also hard work, someplace besides home.

It was not as if our trip into the city had been leisurely. We arrived on a day the city was flooded, in a way that I never saw again in the 10 years New York was home. Our bus wandered around the city, trying to get to Queens for hours. There was no stopping. There was no restroom. There was just an emergency can in the back of the bus with makeshift curtains.

We passed cars that were submerged halfway in water, the flood coming nearly up to their windows. The men and guys on the team would jump off and push cars to safety and jump back on. I don't remember much of how we passed the hours, but I do recall the absolute wonder of being in the place I had been dreaming about for years.

We survived that first night of bone-weary service, and went on to work hard all summer; sometimes doing manual labor like putting in a parking lot or helping a Staten Island pastor remodel the outside of his home. Sometimes we visited churches in the city to help out however we could; stamping tracts on the Lower East Side, performing skits in city parks,

**Dino and Gloria performing "The Heart" skit.**

and running a Sidewalk Sunday school in the projects of Queens. And there were plenty of great team moments like getting lost together in the South Bronx, with a man following us singing Onward Christian Soldiers. Must have been the T-shirts that gave us away.

But what made that summer for me? Was the absolute feeling of being ON. We were working with admitted workaholics; the wonderful visionary Johannson brothers; one of whom pastored a church; one of whom led a ministry that came alongside inner city churches and held their hands up as they battled. We had no choice but to learn a great work ethic; it's who they were.

But it was the city itself which drove me. When we walked down the street to the pizza place and bought our nightly Italian Ices---my heart wept for Gino and his beautiful sons. Dino and Louie would talk to him about Jesus. I told him someday I would come back and stay for good. He promised me he would always be there, right on that corner.

When we handed out Bibles to the Russian Jews on the boardwalk of Coney Island---the expression on their faces----to be given a book which in past times had been forbidden to them---ignited something inside.

When we rode along with Metro Assembly's Saturday School busses and got to see their team in action and met their kids---I wasn't sure how I was ever going to leave.

**Janell, showing us his signature move in Bushwick outside Metro Assembly.**

The city drew me, because the city was people. The city was Tito and Emilo on the Lower East Side, old men in the park. It was Janell, doing flips off of sawhorses in Bushwick. The city was Marco, our little breakdancing friend, who came to Sidewalk Sunday school every week. And it was Steve, the lanky teenager with the sad eyes who tried to disrupt the lessons.

The city was mission. I had never felt so alive.

When the seed that had been planted in that trip came to full fruition, and I returned to the city to lay down my life for 10 years---I went back to that corner in Queens to find Gino and tell him I had come back and that I was back to stay. He was nowhere to be found. And while I asked around and searched the internet and yellow pages, I never did find him.

But every so often, in the middle of worship? God brings his face to my remembrance. And I say a prayer for his salvation. And I say a prayer of thanksgiving. For the dream I got to live which began with one trip.

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