Crystal at Awake Cafe in Detroit!

Before there are any misunderstandings, that title was "Awake" Cafe, not woke!

Big difference. 

But now that we have cleared that up, Crystal sent us some pictures last week of her time in Detroit at Evangelistic Faith Mission's Awake Cafe, part of the inner city ministry that Ned and Judy Sherman are overseeing.

One of her jobs is to grind coffee for the cafe, and right now, she is also grinding and packaging coffee that will be sold at IHC convention coming up in April.

She has to grind coffee, pour it back into the bag it came out of, stamp the bag, glue the top of the bag, and tie a tag onto it.

The coffee is grown in Honduras by people who the mission has taught to be self-supporting.

Then it is bought and brought up to America in big sacks. Ned will take those big sacks somewhere there in Detroit that roasts the coffee beans. Then the coffee beans are brought to the cafe where they are ground, perked, and served to many university students, police, and other individuals who have found the cafe to be a sort of oasis in an otherwise rather terrible city.

 There are several full-time workers and a few part-time, and even volunteeers, including a Pakistani who likes to come help the cafe at closing time. He often brings Indian food from another restaurant where he works, so the cafe workers don't even have to make supper some days!

Crystal has kept busy prepping vegetables like cucumbers and tomatoes for salads and sandwiches that the cafe serves, helping move furniture around in the back so that drywalling can begin in another unfinished section of the cafe, and whatever else she is asked to do.

 Crystal wrote that all the police in the area know this restaurant as a place where they are respected and treated like normal people. 

She said if anybody would try to do anything to the cafe workers, that person would have all those police to contend with! 

Once she and Kaila Rice (one of the managers at the cafe pictured below on an excursion where they went to an island off of Detroit from which they could see the Canadian border) started off after closing time on a walk together. A police car was parked nearby, and he honked. Another police car further down turned on its siren to greet them!

Here is some kind of ship the girls saw that day on their excursion.

Another photo from that day that Crystal sent.