Health Check 2012 - Day 2
Health Check is an outreach ministry in New York CIty started in 2007 by Chris Choi and Robin Song. It originally involved 25 members of Northern NY KSDA church and a few other young adults from the area. The first health check involved doctors giving health exams to people in the area of NY Central KSDA Church. But in the subsequent 4 years, it has expanded to include other non-Korean churches, like Jackson Heights, where it is now based.
This year, it will involve 8 churches, with an expected attendance of 80 participants. The youth will be involved in various ministries such as subway praise and prayer, where they sing praise songs and pray for people in the subways, homeless ministry, where they pass out jackets and sack lunches and minister to the homeless, and a health ministry where they go door to door to do free health screenings.
They also plan to pass out 200 copies of The Great Hope, an abridged version of the Great Controversy. This year's theme is "The Voice" taken from the first angel's message in Revelation 14:7.
Health Check officially kicked off on Sunday, 12/23 with youth showing up at 9AM in the early Sunday morning to be trained. Pastor Chris Choi and Tina Avani, a youth leader at Jackson Heights SDA Church, led their training.
Day 2 was spent in the city, ministering to those in need:
We left (the church) at noon and got dropped off by Pastor Chris near Grand Central Station. Stopped at an ABC store, where we wrote bible verses on post-it notes to pass out with our granola bars. A little later, we met Tommy Tara and Lisa - sitting there on a stoop. Tina looked at them and one of them asked us: Why are you looking at me? Roy stopped to chat with them. Found out the two were married for five years and had spent most of that time living on the streets. They go to a Catholic Church in Manhattan and sometimes the members call the cops on them. But they always read a byway devotional. They recently had another child, Elizabeth who is 6 months old. They didn't know who was taking care of her at the time. Lisa started preaching to us! - Said that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute, and that we are all brothers and sisters. Maybe the most powerful thing about the day wasn't helping them, but allowing them to minister to us.
-Mwenya Mpunda, H. S. Senior from Jackson Heights SDA church
One of the most powerful images, was of my two Sunday church friends who had never done this kind of homeless ministry before. When we met a homeless lady named Lisa, they just got down on the floor and sat next to her. It was shocking to me, to see them kneeling on the floor. Just being able to shake hands with a homeless person was amazing to me. One was missing the tips of his fingers. I hugged him. Would never have done that by myself. I'm a New Yorker. But something changed when we went out together. One young homeless man simply said: Hi I'm Matthew - and didn’t want to say anything else. You could see that he was ashamed to be in his condition. But others couldn't stop talking. We were there for 30 minutes and had to cut them off, although it was hard. You could see that they were just so happy to tell someone their story.
-Tina Advani, youth leader at Jackson Heights SDA Church
The most amazing thing to me was that while we were singing, people really responded to us. From ones I least expected, too. One was this gangster-looking girl on the 4 train - but while we were singing "Lord I Lift Your Name on High" she just joined in! I was shocked. We set up our prayer station and started singing like subway performers. We didn’t expect people to stop but they did! "I guess we sound good?" ☺ You could see that people were touched by what we were singing! It was worth it, just to take them back to the days when they did feel closer to God.
-Rebecca Rosemond from French Gethsemane SDA Church in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, NY
People wanted to give us money. But we didn't have any boxes set up. An Asian mom and her two kids gave a $20 bill and wanted us to sing for them, a special request. That was a little weird. We also got some opposition. A man started yelling at the people listening, that we were liars -- and passing out pamphlets that looked like our Adventist GLOW tracts but were actually anti-Adventist. Then we met a pastor from the New York Christian radio station K-Love. He wanted to put us on the radio.
-Jellen Natividad, Bayhaniyan Filipino SDA Church in Long Island City, Queens, NY
If you'd like to be involved, contact Pastor Chris Choi at tunnel.au@gmail.com