Most of y'all probably have never heard of The Shelter Youth Hostel Ministry and have no idea what I am even doing here. I only know about it because it's a part of my family history: my parents met working here way back when, despite the rule against dating (yes, there is a rule against dating here haha to everyone convinced I'm coming back married. I'm not a rule breaker, unlike some people). Since I've basically grown up hearing about this place, it's actually kinda strange to me that not everyone immediately understands what I mean when I say I'm volunteering at a Christian Youth Hostel.
First of all a hostel is not a brothel. A surprising amount of people make that mistake, including one of my friends' boyfriend, who was under the impression that I was moving to Amsterdam to be a Christian prostitute. A hostel is a basically a cheap hotel, where you share a dorm and bathroom with several different people. Our largest dorm has 18 beds in it and our smallest has 4.
The Shelter Ministry consists of two different hostels: Shelter City and Shelter Jordan. The City is a large hostel located right on the edge of the red light district. The Jordan, where I work, is located in the Jordaan district (hence the name) and is small for a hostel, with less than 100 beds. It's much more calm than the City, where they frequently deal with people coming in high or drunk.
What we try to do is provide an atmosphere where travelers feel relaxed and to create opportunities in which we can talk to our guests about the gospel. We do this through several different methods, most of which just involve getting to know our guest. Every night we have a Bible discussion, at which we provide free drinks and cookies and Bibles. On Saturdays, we do city walks which are short tours of the city. On Friday's we have different events, such as Hostel Night where we provide free food in addition to some sort of entertainment (last week was an improv comedy night) or we do Open Mic Nights. We also try to eat meals with our guests and just spend time with them.
Almost everyone who works at the hostel is a volunteer, apart from the managers and the cleaners. The cleaners work for us for around a month, cleaning the bedrooms and bathrooms in exchange for room and board. Some are Christians, but many are not so we also try to minister to them.
Day to day work means working in the cafe, working reception, or working as a cleaning supervisor. I have been doing cafe work up till now, cooking and cleaning, etc, but will start training on Monday to work reception! I'm quite nervous about it because reception is more responsibility, so prayer would be nice! I think that explains the work pretty well. Next post will be about living here in the community, stay tuned!
No comments:
Post a Comment