It's Thursday (but really Friday)

Here is the update for Thursday, but written on Friday. On Thursday morning we took part in a campus wide cleanup! I think the kids were a little shocked to be scrubbing toilets and floors all the way in California. Parents- feel free to use the advanced training the kids have gotten in this arena upon our return. The entire campus was under massive cleanup mode, and we got to pitch in a helping hand. Some of the girls hung out with members of female discipleship. The discipleship program at Dream Center is phenomenal. They take people in off the street and for at least one year this person has to wake up at 5 am every day, work, eat, read, memorize Scripture, and sleep. It is heavily structured and enforced in order to keep the members from the trouble they left behind. Most of them are recovering drug addicts and/or alcoholics. They all have incredibly unique stories of transformation from "broken and lost" to "redeemed and saved." The kids got to help them and hear some of their stories, but most of all take part in their lives. They came back without a lot of pictures, but full of memories and joy.

The second half of the day for most of us was a ministry called "Food Truck." It's simple- you fill a truck up with food, drive it to a location, unload it, put it in bags by category, and hand them to people who are hungry. It didn't take a whole lot of thought to come up with it- but as Pastor Tommy Barnett says, "See a need and meet it, see a hurt and heal it." These people saw a need that they could meet and they met it. So we got to go out and help hand out this food, speak, and pray with people; most of whom don't speak English anyways. The kids have a ton of stories on running around with little kids whose families were waiting in line, or talking with women and trying to plug their high school Spanish lessons back in. I think they have realized a few things on this trip:
1) How easy their life is.
2) How real hurt can be, even for people who haven't "thrown their lives away."
3) How easy it can be to touch someone's life- simply handing them a bag of green onions and 4 apples donated by a grocery store can light up their day.

I am going to post a blog of just pictures from this ministry up tonight, I hope. Thanks for following us, this has been one of the greatest experiences of my life.