63 stairs

One of the ministry sites that I go to at night is the CCO free store. Its on the fourth floor of a building. And there are 63 stairs to get to the door. I may or may not count them everytime I climb them. (Its actually just something I do. Count stairs. I can't figure out why...)

Any way the building itself is associated with Cornerstone Community Outreach which is the ministry of Jesus People U.S.A ( a local church). On the floors below it is a shelter for families and women. The free store is just what it sounds like. On certain days, they open it up for the people in the shelter to come and take clothes, shoes, bags or books for free.

Our groups come and help organize.

These used to be the windows in the building. And unfortunately I did not get a picture of any of the new windows. But because of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, these brick windows were taken out and instead they got windows that can be opened and allow light to come into the floor. It still gets hot as heck up there but I can imagine it being a lot worse if it was just these windows. (This window is in the stair well of the 63 stairs).

They get tons of donations. And this is where they are stored until people go through them.

And here is just one row of the clothes that are there.

I'm gonna be honest. It's by far not one of my favorite places to go because there is not necessarily a lot for groups to do if there are no hangers. However, this past week when I went with my group. I told them we could leave (because time was about to run out of the meter and it is definitely one of my fears to come back and see a big fat ticket on the windshield). But the group wanted to stay and finish using all the hangers (there were somehow a lot that night). I was shocked.

So instead I went down the 63 stairs to put more quarters in. But I didn't grab the leader's keys and didn't realize this till I got back to the van. So I went back up the 63 stairs, grabbed the keys, walked back to the van, put the quarters in and returned to the group (after climbing the stairs for the fourth time that night). I keep telling myself that at least I'm getting my exercise somewhere since I have no time for a real workout but it doesn't make it any more fun climbing those stairs.

One of the hosts here (Nicole) and I have a joke going about those stairs. She made fun of me for counting them. And it somehow ended up that I kept getting this ministry site to return to each week.