Why Do I Support NYCUP - Brooke Adams

I support NYCUP financially and prayerfully because, quite simply, it changed my life.

I attended the Spring Break Plunge in 2005, during my sophomore year of college. I had planned to come for the week, learn a few things, serve a few people, and go on my way. I was planning to go to Scotland for the summer to visit some friends. Then God changed my plans.

He called me to return to the Bronx for eight weeks that summer. I resisted. I shouted and stamped my foot. And then I went.

At NYCUP I learned hard lessons: how the color of my skin impacts my relationships with those around me. How my sins affect my community and hurt my brothers and sisters in Christ. At my internship, as I became frustrated with what I perceived to be a lack of organization and objective for the summer camp we were trying to run, I learned that in the Latino community in which I was working on the Lower East Side, my supervisors placed more value on the relationships I was developing with our teenagers than on how smoothly my creative writing class went. I learned the hard lesson that I would sometimes mentally "check out" of my internship during the day, until I could leave the projects and return to the NYCUP house, where I felt safer. And I realized that the kids I was beginning to love couldn't leave at the end of the day. And that broke my heart, and made me pay more attention.

When I went back to campus I began taking urban studies and education classes in addition to the literature courses required for my English major. I wrote a photographic essay for an urban studies class on structural racism: how the literal fabric of the city reflects the value the city places on its residents. The route I chose to document? The walk I had taken every day that summer, from the Astor Place subway stop to Avenue D. As you walk, the landscape changes: from a corner with three Starbucks on it, down a street with mostly white young professionals. Then the houses become more decrepit. Halfway to the East River stands a police station that occupies a fully city block. More faces on the street are Hispanic or African-American. And then you run into a dead-end: the projects. The sense of appalled injustice I felt every day I took that walk stays with me, and it motivates me to act. I support NYCUP because I encountered God's call to justice there, and it changed my life.

Brooke Adams is a graduate of Vassar College, Class of 2007. She and her fiance, Simeon, met at NYCUP in the summer of 2005.

Ntandose Hlabangana: Why Do I Support NYCUP

I went to a small university in West Virginia called Salem International University for my undergrad and coming from Zimbabwe I was exposed to schools and campuses that had Christian Student bodies or groups like Scripture Union (like what Intervarsity represents) that participated in missions around the country, enjoying fellowship while reading the bible, worshiping and helping each person in the groups together with those not in these groups grow in their walk with Christ or minister to those that didn't know Christ. I arrived at the University only to realize they did not have one of these. I was bothered for the longest time then I became complacent to the point where I chose to accept the lie that I couldnt do anything. Yes, I found a small church with loving people that took me in and I now consider as family, but I still did not do anything about our campus. I would minister to those that I associated with but I still had the urge to want to reach out to more people but still didnt, because I allowed fear to hold me back. I wish I could say that I left Salem having started a christian student group, but unfortunately that wouldn't be true. I graduated from Salem and moved to Pittsburgh where i re-discovered my childhood passion to reach out to the less fortunate (hence my starting an organization back home to build orphanages and provide funding for tuition to those dependents of HIV/AIDS victims as well as the underprivileged.

NYCUP has reached out to students providing them the opportunity to serve in the ministry, while growing in their walk with God and being brought to awareness of the injustices of this world, as well being involved in missions that show God's love to communities. I will be studying International Law in particular because I have a passion for preservation of humanity and human rights and NYCUP does so through their fight against human trafficking and modern day slavery amongst other things. To sum it all up, NYCUP has become a source that enables and or teaches students to grow and live their lives not just by hearing the word but doing it and practising it in their everyday lives on and off campus by being involved in different missions that not only affect their campuses but communities, nations and the world as a whole. It stands for what I believe in, which is that anyone can make a difference and it starts with one person, which ive come to understand from the first time I arrived in the US when I was in Salem. And it would be humbling to be a part of this ministry.

Feed 500 Reflection: Transformed to Love

On Saturday, November 21, I met two men—Anthony and James. The first thing you need to know about these men is that they are made in the image in God, which, if you boiled it down to its essence, means that traces of divine glory and beauty can be found in every single person. The other characteristic thing about these men is that neither of them have a home.

I was participating in an event called Feed the 500, a day of ministry to the City’s homeless, coordinated by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship’s New York City Urban Project (NYCUP). This day was key in making me realize two things—first, that every human being truly is beautiful and deserves to be cared for, and second, that ultimately, the one reason I can love is because I was loved first.

We trickled into the NYCUP headquarters in Washington Heights, and the hundred student volunteers from around the City broke into teams making sandwiches, writing notes of encouragement, and stuffing brown paper bags with our freshly-made meals. Meanwhile, I was pleased with how gratifying this all was. We were being so nice, taking time out of our Saturdays and feeding people who didn’t have a dining hall into which they could swipe their meal cards. I surveyed the tables lined with rolled-up paper bags, and I said a quick prayer that these meals would change someone’s day for the better.

All that was wonderful until Jonathan Walton, the director of NYCUP, asked each student to take two lunch bags and begin our mission for the afternoon. One lunch, he said, was for the person without a meal and the other was for us. Apparently it was so that we would sit with the person receiving the meal and eat with him. Deep down this is not what I wanted to hear. I longed to not have to get my hands dirty, to be able to hand the poor and needy a lunch while remaining warm, safe and cozy in my fifty dollar Columbia sweatshirt. But that was not what I got.

Before we left, Jonathan reminded us all why we were doing this in the first place. As a group of Christians trying to live out our faith, “we love because he (God) first loved us” (1 John 4:19). Because God loved the people of His creation so much, He died for all the selfishness, hatred and pride in our hearts and rose again so that we could be with Him. These words moved me. If there is a God who loves me without limits so much so that He would die for me, surely with his help I can love the people around me without limits as to how comfortable I am, how safe I feel, or how much time they carve out of my afternoon.

With those words in the back of my mind and with bags of sandwiches filling my arms, my group left Washington Heights for our assigned strip of the city. It was not long before we encountered two men on a park bench. One was bent over, asleep, and the other was organizing his few belongings into some trash bags. A little hesitant at first, my friends and I approached the man who was awake and said, “We’re from the New York City Urban Project… would you like something to eat?” He agreed, and we spent the next hour and forty-five minutes talking to Anthony, hearing of all sorts of things from how he had run three marathons to how he had messed up his marriage and lost his wife, his money and the custody of his child. James, the man who had been sleeping, woke up and began eating several sandwiches, saying a few grateful words here and there and explaining to us why it was hard for him to stand up straight and even hold on to his food. I was filled with so much happiness when both of them laughed from time to time, for I saw a little glimpse of the beauty infused into them, and I imagined God laughing with joy along with us.

It’s easy enough to ladle soup into a bowl and hand it to someone, or even to write a check to a homeless shelter. I’m not trying to diminish the importance of either of those things, but, as Jonathan would say, what would it look like if we actually cared about the people around us and spent time actually loving them? New York would be a very different place if it wasn’t so uncommon to see students, professors, doctors, and lawyers using the resources we have and not just caring for people in the workplace but in all the different places we find ourselves daily. If you feel that’s impossible for you, like I often do, turn to Jesus. I guarantee you He will transform your life and fill you with his power to love.

- Rebekah Mays, Barnard IVCF