Day 6 (Thursday): Washing the feet of others

Sammi

Today, I woke up after a wonderful seven hours of rest. After staring at the ceiling blankly for a couple minutes, I proceeded to get ready for the day by changing, cleaning up my face, and gathering my shower things. After breakfast and devotions, my service group left for our service site, St. Vincent’s. There, we sat around for an hour because the head chef wouldn’t give us anything to do. At one point, Wesley and I decided to ask the chef if she had anything to do, but she told us to sit down. A minute later, she said, “Where are the two boys who wanted something to do earlier?” J.

At 10:30 a.m., we started serving lunch, first to the residents that lived at St. Vincent’s, then to the public homeless. In all, we served around 700 meals today, slightly less than the first three days. To celebrate a week of service, Aaron took us to Dave and Busters where we ordered food, I got a Shirley Temple, and wasted credits on games we lost. Then, we went back to St. Vincent’s to shower, and then to church where everyone in our service group, except me and Hannah, prepped for the community cookout. Our group got second place in the lip syncing battle, and we all got to enjoy the great tasting food and small conversations with the community near our church. 

Second-place winners got sunglasses because of their coolness factor

I got to talk and get to know more people as the dinner crew cleaned  up. Before heading over to the main room for our last LGG, or Large Group Gathering, I took a picture with a young girl, Mabel, who plays around the church in the evening. 

We worshiped the Lord and watched a video about a girl who painted a painting, “Servant’s Hands”, inspired by the story of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples for them. To really display an example of God’s love and Jesus’s servant heart, our leaders got down on their knees and washed our feet, praying afterwards. Moving to the patio, we had our church group time where we discussed how our days went and who we wanted to pray for as well as the next day’s schedule. I was also told that we would be eating rice tomorrow, something I miss so much… as well as milk tea (hint hint family) J. I hope you all had a good day. I definitely did! Time for bed, bai!!! J

Cierra

    Today Yasmine woke me up.  I don’t know what I’d do without her. Well today we had to get to our site early so we did devotions before everyone else. I got all my clothes that I needed for the shower. I’m starting to hate taking a shower especially when the swimsuit and towel smell horrible. Well we got into the car, and I couldn’t help but think that today was the last day working for youth works. The first place we went to was the San Diego food bank. There we packed apples and pears.

Yasmine is freakishly strong for her size

Near the end me, Ada, and Yasmine were helping to make the bags that we put the pear and apples in. This guy named Chris was helping us, let’s just say he looked a lot like Superman. We kind of lied to him, we told him that my name was Lemon, Yasmine’s name was Lime, and Ada’s name was Tiger Lily. He actually believed us. 

Once we were done packing the fruit, I asked a guy that worked there if I could get a slip saying that I volunteered for my volunteer hours in high school. Then we left, and went to Ranch 99 to buy some food. Our next stop was the C.C.S.A. We ate lunch first and then went to the C.C.S.A..  There we helped pack backpacks for people who don’t have backpacks. It felt great to give back to the community.  

Joni climbed on top of a huge pile of backpacks to reorganize

The shed is stuffed full-to-the-brim with backpack donations

After it was shower time and I tried to go as fast as possible. After we headed back to Youth Works. Tonight was going to be lots of fun because we were having a cookout, and a lip-sync battle. Let’s just say that we didn’t plan anything to lip-sync, so we decided on the chicken dance. So after watching everyone’s dance we knew we were going to lose, but we still had fun doing the chicken dance. 

We finished eating our burgers or hot dogs, and helped clean up. Then we started getting ready for LGG. In LGG we worshiped, watched a video, and answered some questions.

Then came the foot washing. Everyone from our church gathered in a circle, and Joni and Aaron washed our feet and prayed for us. Then we just talked about our day. Everyone then split up to get ready for bed because we had to wake up early tomorrow.  So……. BYE!!!!!!  

Some of those whom we prayed for tonight:

• Boys’ and Girls’ Club kids: Sophia, Isabella and Angel
• Chris (aka Superman) who served at the Food Bank with us and with whom Joni talked to about religion and philosophy
• A guy Hannah served who was very rude to her
• A counselor from the Minnesota church whose youth are at Youthworks with us: Lisa, who has a torn meniscus and had to walk with a walker today because her knee is getting worse 
• Mabel, a little girl whose family lives in their car and shelters at church’s parking lot each night
• Colton, a man with a mental disability who served alongside us
• All the homeless soup kitchen staff, including Ron who seems bitter and alone
• All the SD homeless, of whom we have seen and served many this week (“only” 500 served today at St. Vincent’s)
• Sher, a woman whose apartment was so bad that she had to leave and now is looking for a job and a new place to stay in San Diego, but is temporarily living in the church parking lot in her car