San Francisco...

Hey guys!



I got back from San Francisco this afternoon! :) It was a lot of fun and definitely an interesting experience to say the least. We took 4 Junior High students (3 boys and a girl) to Urban Plunge that is put together by CSM (Center for Student Missions). We did a lot of inner city ministry and service there in San Francisco, mostly centered around the Tenderloin district and other programs that help the poor and hungry.

I guess I'll give a brief day by day summary and then talk about some things that I learned as a result of this trip...

Sunday
We arrived around 5 on Sunday and got settled in. We had an orientation and met our City Host, Rich. (Your City Host is with you throughout the week at each ministry sight and helps with debriefing and things like that.) We ate Vietnemese food on Sunday night. It was good, but challenging because we had to eat with chopsticks! :) Rich had to teach me how to use the chopsticks and then I kept having to have lessons throughout dinner to work on my "form". It was a lot of fun and the food was amazing! :) We then went on a Prayer Tour and saw various parts of the city and prayed for different things. It was really really neat to see how different the city is and how much need there is there. We went up to Coit Tower (it's on top of a hill) and we could see most of San Francisco from up there and it was amazing!!! All of the lights from the city were absolutely incredible! :) Definitely something I won't soon forget!

Monday
Monday we worked at the San Francisco Food Bank in the morning. It was a really neat place and there was so much food there! We worked on putting together one pound bags of rice from a one ton bag. It was really fun to get to work with the kids and get to know them better as well as Rich. Monday afternoon we worked at the Salvation Army Service Center sorting through clothes and putting together various gift type things for older teenage girls. Again, it was a lot of fun to get to hang out with the group and get to know each other better. It was amazing to me how many clothes we sorted. Old Navy, Banana Republic, and Gap had donated all of their sample clothing (things that the mannequins wear) and other clothes that were out of season or whatever. We also prayer walked over the Golden Gate Bridge on Monday afternoon and it was AMAZING!!!! It was really foggy and windy so we couldn't see much of the city, but it was still sooooo cool!!!! Oh how I loved it!!! So much fun!!! (We also saw the family from Little People Big World before we started walking so that was exciting too!) We ate Nicaraguan food on Monday night and it was interesting. Not anything like I remember eating when I was in Nicaragua, but it's all good. It was a good experience. We went to a park for debriefing on Monday night and it was a lot of fun to hear what the kids had to say about what we had done on Monday. We got into an interesting conversation about where do you draw the line as far as just meeting people's spiritual needs (preaching the Word of God) vs. meeting the physical needs of people. I think that's something I've struggled with alot, especially since becoming a social work major and I know there's a delicate balance between the two, but I also know that people are never going to listen to us preach if their stomachs are growling. It was an interesting conversation and something I know I will continue to wrestle with as I get older.

Tuesday
Tuesday was a hard day, but a good one. We went over to Oakland and worked in the St. Vincent de Paul Dining Room in the morning and then served lunch for a couple of hours to homeless and poor people in the area. It was a lot of fun. I enjoyed working there because it was very organized and run very smoothly (I'm learning I love organization and chaos really bothers me!). I got the job of banging trays during lunch time. It definitely took me back to the good ole days of Pineywoods and working in the Deuce!!! Oh how it made me miss it! Anyway, it was fun and I had some interesting conversations with some of the volunteers. Before I left, I was crowned Queen of Garbage by the guy that was spraying down the trays. It was amazing! :) One man I talked with had been volutneering there every Tuesday for 17 years. It really challenged me to be more involved in doing something like that on a regular basis and not just for my service points for KXA or something else. Rich (our City Host) had to leave our group on Tuesday afternoon due to a family emergency. It was terrible heartbreaking and we really hated to see him have to leave. He was a great leader and definitely an amazing man of God. Please pray for him and his family during this time. We got a new City Host, Lisa, on Tuesday afternoon when we went to work at the St. Vincent Day Home, a day care for lower income kids also in Oakland. I loved Tuesday afternoon and it was probably one of my favorite things we did!! I was in the Dolphin class room of 4 year olds for the afternoon and I had a blast!!! We had snack when they got up from their naps and then we played for a little while in their room. It was such a blast! The kids just latched on to me and wouldn't let me go. How sweet it was to feel that unconditional love that they just poured out on to me. Kids never cease to amaze me...:) and these were definitely no different! :) Theire energy was so contagious and definitely an encouragement to me because Tuesday was a rough day, with Rich leaving and everything and just being exhausted from working all morning. :) Anyway, it was a good time and I really loved the Day Home. So much fun! Tuesday night we had Indian food, which definitely added a little spice to our week! :) haha! It was really good, but different, almost a little too spicy for me, but I'm glad I tried it.

Anyway, that's a couple of days from my trip. I'll write more in the morning before I leave to go to World Changers about the rest of the week. It was a good trip, but it's definitely good to be back in the land of Clovis! I'm definitely looking forward to sleeping in my own bed tonight!

Please be praying for us tomorrow as we go to World Changers. We'll be working here in Clovis/Fresno, but we'll be staying at a local college. :) Yay for another week away from "home!"