the most recent update…

An e-mail I sent out this afternoon:

Hello everyone.

I pray all of you are doing well this week as a new month is about to begin.  Thank you so much for your prayers and for your financial support this summer.  I know that I’ve said that several times, but I mean it.  Well, I am down to my final week (and a few days) here in the District of Columbia.  I am very ready to come home, though I will miss this place, the people that have been so kind and hospitable, and the children that I have connected with in the neighborhood.  I have a lot of work left to do over these next few days, compiling my field notes, pulling all my research data together and beginning to try to draw some conclusions to prepare for my final report.  Here is an update since our last e-mail together:

Survey responses have continued to trickle in.  I am hoping to gain one hundred responses before I have to use my data.  Sadly, this is much less than what I was hoping for; however, I am very glad to have what I do and there is still a lot that I can do with the information.   The church now has a connection to some of the neighborhood residents and over 30 contacts who are willing to volunteer their time, money, or talents to help improve their neighborhood.  This would be a good start if the church wanted to establish a relationship with the neighborhood residents before or during an affordable housing intervention, if they choose to do so.

Due to a broad research focus, I will only be able to narrow the church’s options for involvement down to a few, not one or two.  They will still have to pray about what they feel called to as a church, to help them choose an intervention.  Much of my research will inform them of what is happening in the neighborhood, the local area, and city wide.   Much of my research has led me to conclude that the preservation of affordable housing is the most needed intervention at this time in this neighborhood.  This is not a final conclusion, because I have to use my data and findings to back that claim up and cannot do that until next week.  The target group most in need is the elderly of the neighborhood.

The focus groups I had attempted to carry out did not happen, because no one in the neighborhood was able or willing to participate. This was certainly frustrating, but I cannot control everything.  My internship was in God’s hands when I came here and remains so to this day.  I have learned and continue to learn to trust that God knows what he is doing and that just because things did not go my way, does not mean that no good will come of this.  I can only pray and trust His Word when it says that everything God does works for the good of those who love him, that His throne is made of justice, and that he hears the cry of the helpless in this city.

Pray that I will finish strong and that I will not be discouraged.  I’ll send out an update in a week and if you’d like to read it, I will attach a copy of my final report.

Peace,
Chris Nystrom

The opening of ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”… if you haven’t read it and you love poetry, you need to.

‘Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells;
Streets that follow like a tedious agrument…
Oh, do not ask, ‘What is it?’
Let us go and make our visit.’