Visitors

In addition to everything else going on this week, we have several groups of people from the good 'ol USA visiting us. My team leader has a group of people from his old church back in Virginia coming to Camden for a few days, and then some high-schoolers from our church in Philly are coming on Friday (I think...gotta confirm that, come to think of it). We'll be putting them to good use praying for Camden and hopefully they'll help us see our city in new ways.
I was reading a book called Urban Christian a few weeks ago. It's by a man who was a pastor in Chicago in the 1960s and 70s. All kinds of horrible stuff going on then - race riots, gang warfare, the failure of basic governmental services. He says that people who live in urban settings tend to build up psychological filters to keep themselves from being overwhelmed by all the audio/visual/relational stimulation that comes from city life. But this means that we can fail to see things about our city that are right in front of us. Groups like the ones visiting us bring fresh eyes and ears, unchecked by the filters we've built up. They have their own filters, no doubt, but those filters were designed for somewhere else, so they see things about Camden that we tend to miss.

Euro 2008

We've been keeping up on the Euro 2008 football tournament, but to be honest, there isn't much local interest. The English were put out at the qualifying stage back in the winter, which left us only with the Austrians to root for (one of our close friends is from Vienna). Sadly, the Austrians were unable to overcome Germany in their final group match, which has us clutching at straws to find connections to a team. Turkey has provided some very exciting matches - two unthinkable come from behind victories.
Anyway, tonight we had some friends over, but the Spain/Italy match didn't really hold our attention, and we decided to play Settlers of Catan instead of watching the whole match. Though I did manage to situate myself so that I could still see the screen. I was banker, so in the midst of watching I'd hand out cards and try to remember what move I wanted to make next. Oh yeah, and I still managed to win. Look out Erik, I'm coming for you.

Update on the garden

So last week we discovered that our garden had been trashed by some people. Plants pulled up and trampled on, flower stalks broken off. It was a bit discouraging, but we got back to work again and it's starting to look really good. One more week or so and we'll have all the weeds cleared out and we should have plants growing nicely.

Primate Planting

Can you guess from the title what I did last night? Here's a hint: The title uses a really bad pun on the audible similarity between the words Gorilla and Guerrilla. Still no?
I went Guerrilla Gardening. To be honest, this wasn't my first attempt at sprucing up some of Camden's neglected public spaces, but it was the most successful. I met up with four others that I connected with through a local website, and brought along one of the other guys on the team. We hit a raised planter along the canal near our house. It was overgrown and filled with weeds, with a few nice plants mixed in. We weeded it, turned up the soil, pruned some of the existing bushes, and added a nice mix of flowering plants and herbs.
The police came by at one point, and warned us to be careful of needles because the area was a hang-out for junkies. This was confirmed when we found a needle, which we removed to our improvised 'sharps box'. Other than the warning, though, the officers were encouraging and glad to see us there - I think we pushed the junkies off, at least for the few hours we were there.
At the end of the evening, we celebrated with a drink at the local pub; but not before stopping to water a few herbs and tomato plants that one of our fellow guerrillas had planted last week.