hangenout with liz

Shopping and the Looong bus ride...

Ok, last NYC update. I promised people that I would finish this long trip diary, so here it is. On Thursday we went down to Canal Street in Chinatown. See, this is a district in Manhattan that is full of immigrants, most of whom are illegal. The police and the city of NY let them live down there and sell stuff because it brings in millions of dollars a day in tourism. So for fun we took the group of kids down there. Well, a beautiful thing about downtown NY is stolen purses. You see these Chinese people have friends that work in stors like Coach, Louis Vutoinne, Gucci, Prada, etc. Sadly, many of these people steal purses and sell them to others to sell in NY. That's where the tourists come in. See, people like me who love a good deal and love to bargain with people are marketed and recruited to buy the purses which give money to the immigrants who can then continue to live in NY and make money for the city and so on and so forth. So I'm standing on the street just minding my own business and some Chinese guy confronts me and asks if I would be interested in a purse, and of course, I said yes. So me and a couple of the girls who wanted a purse too, follow this guy to his store. Well, that's what we thought. Anyway, he takes us to this huge wall right outside on the street covered in movie posters. He then gets on his Nextel walkie talkie and says something in Chinese which causes the door to open. It's pitch black inside and he waves us in. Scary right? Well, before I could even realize what was going on , we were following him up three flights of stairs in the darkness. Just when I thought we were all going to die for sure, he takes us into this little room. The door slowly opens and inside is the most beautiful little air conditioned store you've ever see, stocked full of these purses. How exciting right? Well, later that day we decided that it probably wasn't the safest thing to do and we vowed never to do it again. I bought some NYC t-shirts and a turtle (whose named Conan after the Late Show tv set we visited) . It was a great trip. All in all we saw 21 people saved and many more become interested in the gospel. So it was a great trip. Next year it seems like we are going to go to Paris. I'm so excited. Please continue to pray that the decisions made on the trip last a lifetime.

posted by Liz @ 2:20 PM