Today, my group and I went to St. Thomas Moore, an assisted living center. We split up into two groups, one starting on the first floor, the other on the fifth. Then we split up into 2 person units, and visited residents who were willing to chat. I was paired up with Kevin Hyer. There are two people in particular who are still in my mind. We started our experience on the fifth floor, visiting a man named John McRory. We knocked on the door and asked if we could visit with him; he immediately turned his attention away from the TV and shifted positions on his bed (with much effort) so he could talk to us. He is over 70 years old, and (we think) he had severe arthritis in his extremely deformed hands. Kevin and I stayed with him and talked for about 45 minutes. We spoke about all sorts of things like his family, his jobs, and his favorite sport of all: baseball. The whole time we were with him, I could not help but notice that, in his eyes, I could see how important it was for him to get visitors and how much he loved talking to us. We ended our visit by reading John 3:16, because we wanted to try to read some familiar scripture.
The other memorable person I met was a man who went by the name of “Mr. Jimmy”
Me: I didn’t catch your name. I’m Kevin Cronin.
Mr. Jimmy: Hmm… you can… call me Mr. Jimmy. That’s ‘J’ ‘I’ ‘M’ ‘M’ ‘Y’ Jimmy, 5 letter word.
Mr. Jimmy was full of wise words and advice. He was very fond of spelling out words and going on tangents. Some of his best quotes include:
“What looks like gold is not always gold”
“You need to learn a new word every day”
“What’s the spice of life? ‘V’ ‘A’ ‘R’ ‘I’‘E’ ‘T’ ‘Y’”
“You need to have a firm handshake. Put it here *grabs hand and pulls vigorously back and forth*”
“You need to stay in a group. There is strength in numbers.”
Mr. Jimmy was quite the chatterbox. We then met Tim Ward and Lindsey Merritt in the lobby and they spent the rest of the day with us.
For anyone who didn’t know, the big theme of this trip is in the song God of the City by Chris Tomlin. My van created an interpretive dance to this song (Much credit to Tim Ward). We preformed it on stage to the rest of the group at the debriefing. It was too intense to describe in this blog. Luckily, a video was created. It should be on Facebook soon.
God Bless,
Kevin Cronin
The other memorable person I met was a man who went by the name of “Mr. Jimmy”
Me: I didn’t catch your name. I’m Kevin Cronin.
Mr. Jimmy: Hmm… you can… call me Mr. Jimmy. That’s ‘J’ ‘I’ ‘M’ ‘M’ ‘Y’ Jimmy, 5 letter word.
Mr. Jimmy was full of wise words and advice. He was very fond of spelling out words and going on tangents. Some of his best quotes include:
“What looks like gold is not always gold”
“You need to learn a new word every day”
“What’s the spice of life? ‘V’ ‘A’ ‘R’ ‘I’‘E’ ‘T’ ‘Y’”
“You need to have a firm handshake. Put it here *grabs hand and pulls vigorously back and forth*”
“You need to stay in a group. There is strength in numbers.”
Mr. Jimmy was quite the chatterbox. We then met Tim Ward and Lindsey Merritt in the lobby and they spent the rest of the day with us.
For anyone who didn’t know, the big theme of this trip is in the song God of the City by Chris Tomlin. My van created an interpretive dance to this song (Much credit to Tim Ward). We preformed it on stage to the rest of the group at the debriefing. It was too intense to describe in this blog. Luckily, a video was created. It should be on Facebook soon.
God Bless,
Kevin Cronin
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