Youth

Thirteen youth and adults headed to Oklahoma City to work for the Regional Foodbank of OKC for two days. Amidst all the hard work and sweat, we played, laughed and created numerous memories. Our work at the Regional Foodbank included rebagging beans (50,000 lbs of beans) and corn (50,000 lbs of corn). Sound easy, and it is, but it is definitely time consuming. We also worked in the community garden. We planted squash, flowers, eggplant and herbs. For every item we planted, we got a lesson on the variety of ways this food could be used to feed a family.

Outside of working we played at the park, visited the National Memorial of the OKC bombing and went to Frontier City. It was a glorious trip.

See the face of God in the City – What exactly does that mean? None of the seven people who embarked upon Denver, Colorado for a week with the DOOR program had any idea. We had no idea what we would be doing for our mission work or who we would be working with or who we would meet or anything else.

All we knew was that the boys would be sleeping in a separate building from the girls. Not much to go on. To say the least, we were all a bit nervous.

DOOR is an acronym for the phrase, Discovering Opportunities for Outreach and Reflection. Again, this made no sense to us in the beginning but now that we have experienced DOOR, we get it.

Each day we served a different agency. St. Francis Center, a place where homeless can get their mail, hang out in the afternoon or overnight, take a shower, get clothes, etc.

They even have the opportunity to store their belongings. Each person is given one garbage bag for storage. Can you imagine packing your entire life and fitting it into a large trash bag?

Project Angel Heart provides meals for individuals with terminal illnesses, mainly HIV/AIDS and Cancer. Clients have the potential to receive six meals a week.

Network Coffeehouse is a daily lounge for homeless men. Our role was to interact, chat and play games with the men. This was a role all of us were very nervous about. It pushed us out of our comfort zone.

World Vision has a mission of calling people to a life-changing commitment to serve the poor in the name of Christ. We filed zippers on confiscated jeans, packaged school supplies, and sorted thousands of pairs of Nike tennis shoes.

Franciscan Friends of the Poor is an agency that serves breakfast and lunch to the homeless five days a week. Our tasks included preparing the tuna sandwiches and sides and serving the guests.

We also served at Jesus to the World, another agency that serves lunch meals to the homeless.

Metro Care Ring is a food distribution agency. They collect food, package it for the clients, have a commodities program, etc.

At Crossroads of the Rockies we assisted with a day camp program that was offering Vacation Bible School and lots of other children’s activities.

We set out to make a connection and a difference greater than we ever had, but our lives were touched in more ways than we expected.

Despite being tired however, we always had time for hanging out, having fun and making friends.

Hopefully the smiles on our faces show you the great time we had and how much we learned.