We got into Des Moines, Iowa on Monday (May 14th) and headed to Calvary Chapel Des Moines but when we got there we were super confused because the sign said "Calvary Baptist Church" but the Calvary church finder website said it was called Heartland Christian Fellowship but the church's website said Calvary Chapel Des Moines, so it was just a big huge confusion. Of course nobody was there to clear that up for us, so we left to be tourists. Oddly enough, the capitol building was about 1/4 mile away, if that. We could see the dome of it from the church! If you have never been to Iowa (which is probably most of you who will read this), you are missing out on the most awesome capitol building I have ever seen!
bling gold dome!
sweet interior!
sickest library I have EVER seen!
(notice the spiral staircases on the back wall)
After the sweet capitol building, we headed downtown and on the way found this Chinese garden. It's really funny because I thought after Texas I wouldn't see any minorities until I got to Chicago, which was totally not the case. And then we headed downtown, which was a total ghost town! But they do have this really cool sculpture park.
creepy little guys!
one of my favorite sculptures, seeing as I love words :)
inside the sculpture
On Tuesday we were trying to figure out where in the city to go, so we did the defaults and headed to the mall. (It's hard sometimes when you haven't met anyone to try to figure out where to find people.) Well, that was a bust. I think there were about 6 people in the whole place besides the workers. Hopefully this picture will illustrate how super lame it was.
Despite it's emptiness, we did meet one guy that gave us a couple of tips on places to go, one of them being Gray's Lake, so we left the mall to go down there, but when we got outside, we saw that our brake lights had been on the whole time. Grrreeeat. As expected, our battery was dead. No big deal, we had cables, so Marc asks this man who was walking by, "Excuse me, do you think I could get a jump?" No response. "I have cables." Still no response, he just kept walking! So I went across the parking lot and was going to ask this woman but then saw she was on the phone so I asked the only other guy I saw, but he said, "Sorry, I have to make it to an appointment." Gggrrrrr. Marc was pretty upset at this time, but he asked another guy who just said, "Sorry man" without even looking at him. That was pretty upsetting, but the next guy finally agreed, although reluctantly, and we were back on our way to Gray's Lake but on the way we noticed an IHOP! Not the restaurant silly! An International House of Prayer! (If you haven't heard of them, look it up, it's super awesome. It's just this place where you can go & pray! Sometimes they have live worship, but most of the time they stream it in from a bigger IHOP.)
There we met Jeff, who we talked to for quite a while. Then we continued on down the road to Hy-Vee, which is a pretty large chain of grocery stores in the midwest. Oddly enough, they have a little cafe and even a place to sit and eat! It was totally strange, going to a grocery store to eat but a good friend had sent us "lunch money" and told us we had to try the tenderloin sandwich, so we went!
Funny story, we get there and we see a table of 4 guys all wearing white button ups & ties, with black name tags over their pockets. Mormons! Oh, happy day! I love a good conversation with a Mormon! So we sat down and just as we were about to say something, I noticed that the tags said "Manager" & "Assistant Manager". Close call! But how funny that would have been. :) And from there we headed to Gray's Lake.
There was a good amount of people there, but most of them were preoccupied either with exercising or fishing. There was this one guy who was kind of moseying about getting near to people but not really talking too much to them so Marc decided to talk to him. He had just gotten out of prison & was going to a church downtown, but was really reserved, almost agitated or nervous. So they talked for just a bit then Jeff (from IHOP) met up with us & took us out to dinner! We ended up going to Mr. Egg Roll and hanging out for two hours talking and fellowshipping. It was so nice!
On Wednesday morning we had a lot to catch up on (and nobody is really out in the morning anyways) so we went to Starbucks to read, etc. Afterwards we had leftover lunch money so we went to Cici's Pizza Buffet! Lunch buffet=$5! AWESOME! I was oooober happy. And then it was off to Gray's Lake for some more weird conversation! The first people we talked to were these four high schoolers sitting at a table waiting to get picked up. One was Catholic, one was Agnostic, one was Buddhist, and one was Jewish. What a mix! We were able to share the gospel with them and just chill & hang out a little bit but they got picked up so we continued walking around. The next conversation we had was heartbreaking. This 19 year old was waiting by himself while his mom, sister, and nephew changed. He was telling us about the gangs in Des Moines (weird) and the bad neighborhood & party house he lives in. Quite a lot of people in his family sells drugs (including himself). He had this gaze that was cold, icy, and piercing, like he would kill you for stepping on his foot. His family returned and I just felt so bad for this little boy. He was probably about 1 1/2 to 2 years old and my heart broke to think of the life that he would be raised into. I honestly wanted to kidnap him & raise him in a better environment....anything would be better than the life he was in. His mom (the sister) was pregnant again & she goes, "you know what sucks? I can't get pregnant by a good man! The first one took off and this one is homeless and not even looking for a job." And to top it all off, she's married to a gay man who's boyfriend lives with them. See what I mean about wanting to take the baby? Heartbreaking. I wondered if maybe I could pay her for the little guy.
From there we went back to IHOP and were able to chat with the director, Justin, for about half an hour and then we were off to church! When we got there they clarified the confusion with the name. They used to be Heartland Christian Fellowship but in the last week or so were changed to Calvary Chapel and also had just bought the old Calvary Baptist building but everything was in transition so we had the right place all along! As we walked in, we met Rebecca & her husband Jeff. They were so nice! They even sat next to us, which I thought was the nicest thing, they kinda went out of their way to make us feel welcome! So we talked to a few people who had come over to say hi. This, too, touched me because so many people don't want to say hi to new people but they were so nice, so loving & genuine, too, which made all of the difference. We also met Kerry, who is an elder in the church. He invited us to come over & have dinner/shower/stay the night the next day. Sweeeet.
After church, it was still early so we walked around downtown since we were pretty much right there. As we walked, there were just a TON of people coming out of this venue where a show had just ended. We walked about 20 feet past the group of hipsters and there was this guy smoking outside. Marc said hi and he asked who was playing, so we all started talking. Poor guy had had a super rough night at work and just started venting to us about it. Marc dropped the gospel on him, but he told us that he doesn't believe in God because He's not real and people always think that he's going to answer their prayers but He never does. Marc & I both had a feeling that he had been "burned" before & that God hadn't given him something that he deemed important. Please pray that God would work on him.
After about 20 minutes of standing out there, he asked us if we were hungry. Turned out, he was the chef at the restaurant we were standing outside of so he took us in and made us sandwiches! It was no joke THE BEST chicken sandwich I ever had in my life! Someone else we talked to later in the week said that they have the best chicken sandwich in town! It's so crazy awesome how the Lord blesses us. That food was not something we needed, we had just made PB & J's an hour before so we were good, but God decided to bless us anyways, not only with delicious food, but really amazing conversation. Praise Jesus!
my blackened, grilled chicken sandwich & Marc's blackened tilapia sandwich.
compliments of Jesus! and Justin lol
After eating, we headed over to Walmart to go to sleep but when we pulled in, Marc noticed these people in a packed out expedition. We were just chillin in the van but Marc had the itch so we got up & went over and talked to them. The guy was at least 45, probably around 50, and the woman who was with him looked to be about 30/35. So we offered them food but they had already eaten so we got to talking. They have been living in their vehicle for a month now, alternating between staying at 2 Walmarts. They totally convicted me of my selfishness. Most of the time when we see an RV/mini RV/bus/whatever, we always joke about having it and how cool it would be, but here were these people older than us who literally had half of the space that we did and they had a dog AND guinea pigs in there with them. Talk about perspective. Thank you Jesus that our van fits us perfectly!
On Thursday we looked up parks on the map and found one that had water but when we got there, there was an art center so we went in and saw the "art". Call me old or whatever, but I don't see why marbles and jars lying around on the floor are art? Or 5 milk crates stacked on top of one another? I don't get it, so we weren't there too long until we headed back downtown. We came across this spice shop that was amazing! Not only did they have spices, but they had large vats of oils & vinegars that you could mix & match. The lady who worked there gave us different ones to try. At first I was thinking to myself, "I don't want to try this oil by itself" but it was so delicious!!! From there we came across a stationery store where we started talking to this girl, Jen, who was super intrigued with what we were doing so we talked for a little while & gave her our card and moved along. There was another little art museum that we went to called "Thee Eye". They had this huge set up of iPads that had a rotation of 15 photos on each one that alternated every few seconds. It was legit, they were all pictures that had been taken on iPads or phones.
a photo mobile thingy
the iPad display
Shortly after, we got a call from a man we had met at the church, Kerry (& his wife Peggy), inviting us over for dinner. Swweeet. Especially sweet because for dinner was Chipotle! Oh delicious burrito! :) This other couple also came for dinner, Frank & Lisa. Frank does a lot of evangelism and street preaching so him & Marc had a lot to talk about. We talked a lot about the trip, having kids, things back home, all kinds of stuff. They invited us to stay the night so we were able to shower & hang out & fellowship. It was really cool.
Friday we went to the mall they told us about that was near their house, Jordan Creek. This mall was ridiculous! Something that you would expect to see in Orange County....Coach, Burberry, stores like that, just super expensive all over the place with almost no "normal" shops. Marc wasn't feeling too well so we just sat down at a Starbucks and chilled out for a few hours. I think that Starbucks is to us like a living room is to people with homes lol. So we got a text from Jen (the girl at the stationery store) inviting us over to do laundry or shower if we needed to. We had just showered, but we did need to do laundry so we headed back downtown to her loft, which was in an old brick warehouse that had been converted and turned into lofts. SWEET!
Jen's is the building on the right.
So we did laundry and talked for a couple of hours! We shared our stories, which I have been forbidden from including in the blog lol. A fun fact that we learned was that her dad set a Guinness World Record for the most amount of push-ups done on the back of his hands in a minute with 123! Nuts! So when laundry was over, she invited us out to a Des Moines hot spot, Fong's Pizza, a definitely weird combination! Chinese style pizza! The appetizer she ordered for us was Chinese cheese sticks, which is basically mozerella sticks with egg roll wrapping instead of breading. BOMB!!!!! So stinking delicious! After eating we walked back to her place and hung for a little while longer, then headed out to get some sleep.
best cheese sticks ever
oops, wasn't ready for that one! Marc, me, & Jen
our impromptu photo shoot in the hall way!
and the elevator!
the view of downtown from out front of Jen's loft
it was late, don't ask!
On Saturday morning, we got up (kinda) early and hit up the Farmer's Market that they have every Saturday morning and is really big! it takes up blocks and there are tons and tons of vendors! Marc was able to hand out some tracts and talk to a few people, but we weren't there for too long. The church was having a work day to get the new building ready so we wanted to go help out. By the time we got there, a lot of the stuff was done :( but we were able to help trim one of the trees. Marc helped cut down the branches while I chopped them down to manageable pieces. When we were all done we headed back to Kerry's house to shower. By the time we got there, Kerry, his son, and Kenny (a guy from church) were all about to leave & go play disc golf. They invited Marc & I but I was exhausted. Marc was pretty tired also, but is a glutton for punishment so he went. I stayed at the house, took a shower, watched some softball, and took a nap. It was fantastic! By the time they got home, it was almost time to leave to go to Rebecca & Jeff's house. They were having people over for dinner/game night. It was such a fun night! Tons of joking around, we fit in really easily. It really was a fun night I'll always remember! Actually all of Iowa was pretty memorable.
Sunday morning, of course, we went to church at Calvary. Jen had told her pastor about us & he wanted us to come share at his church, but we had already committed to going to Calvary so that was a bummer, but I totally love the people at Calvary & really wanted to be able to say bye to them.
After service, Lisa (the girl from dinner the first night at Kerry's) invited us to go to this local spot "Zombie Burger" so we headed there & Jen met up with us, so that was fun. Zombie Burger was crazy! They have a burger called "They're coming to get you Barbara" that has, as it's buns, grilled cheese sandwiches! Or there is one called "The Undead Elvis" that has peanut butter & a sunny side up egg & who knows what else. There were a ton of crazy concoctions and crazy artwork! But it was awesome.
the front door
the artwork along the wall.
more artwork
coolest restroom signs ever!
So that was it for Iowa. We headed out after lunch and made our way north to Minnesota! Look for that update in a few days! Pray for us that we would have opportunity to talk to as many people as possible. We've already had a few really good opportunities here, but more is always better!
In Iowa we did talk to more people than I wrote about, but after a week it's always hard to remember, which is why I wrote them down but, as I said, I unfortunately lost that piece of paper. Poo.
Ok, talk to you soon. :)
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