St. Aidan’s 2009 Summer Mission Trip to New York City

This Summer, youth and adults from St. Aidan's will be heading to New York City, a city with huge disparities of wealth and poverty with many diverse opportunities for mission, and a city with a lot to see and do when our work is done. 

When: Monday, August 3, 2009 – Saturday, August 8, 2009

Lodging:  Because our work projects are in Brooklyn, we decided to stay in lower Manhattan, which gives us a fairly easy commute to Brooklyn while allowing us to explore New York City when our work is over for the day.  We will stay in the Bowery Best Western in lower Manhattan (231 Grand Street, NY), where room rates are fairly reasonable ($55 per person/night). 

Work Project (Tuesday through Friday):

St. John’s Bread & Life Program (Brooklyn) - http://www.breadandlife.org/

We’d spend our morning and early afternoons (approximately 7 a.m. until 2 p.m.) preparing and serving breakfasts and lunches for St. John’s soup kitchen and helping in their food pantry.  This project will be a great opportunity to serve the homeless while giving us an opportunity to interact with them.

Travel: We’ll travel to New York by bus on the Vamoose Express Bus Service from Rosslyn for $25 each way.

Entertainment: We’ll have our late afternoons and evenings to ourselves to eat dinner, explore NYC, and have worship and fellowship time together.  At some point during the week, we’ll get to a service at St. John the Divine Episcopal Cathedral, and we’re hoping to get tickets to a Broadway show one evening.

Cost per person: $125 per person

Although the total cost of the trip would run higher, we hope that each person will only have to pay $125 of their costs and that the rest of the cost will be covered in other ways.  We received a mission grant from the Diocese of Virginia for $800; the St. Aidan’s Outreach Committee has pledged $1500 as seed money for our trip; we raised $500+ through our Shrove Tuesday pancake supper.  The rest we hope to raise fundraisers, like serving tea again for the Acoustic Eidelon concert on Sunday, May 17, and having a car wash on a Sunday during the summer.

Contact Elizabeth for more information.