Mission to the Homeless
Denver, Colorado
August, 2012: Our youth group made a wonderful, potentially life-changing trip to Denver, CO to distribute "care bags" to the homeless. We first visited a homeless shelter and got information on a safer part of the city to visit, a park. On the way their our van broke down, and we had to be shuttled in groups to the park. But, we got there, and the kids excitedly distributed the bags we took.
We had 80 bags and thought it would take a long time to distribute the bags. It didn't. The kids fanned out in groups of 3 to 5 apiece (always with an adult present), and people started coming to us.
We were able to get in quite a few conversations. My youth group was excited to hear some of the stories the homeless had to share. They heard stories about drugs, family dysfunction, crime, and running away from home. You'll hear one of the stories in the video below.
Irony: in the same park where we found over 100 homeless people a wedding party was gathered to take photographs.
Our kids gave a report on their trip to Denver.
I was very proud of our kids. They have deeper insights than we might imagine! I was proud of how they did in Denver and of their talks to the church.
The homeless are with us. And, as one of the kids said, they are people, just like us.
Can you name the most famous homeless person in the world?
Warren
Posts
5 comments:
Do you know about the Purple Door Ministry in Denver? It is a new ministry in Denver run by Mark Smesrud (York graduate). It is a coffee hours that will provide encouragement, job training, and employment opportunities to the homeless.
http://purpledoorcoffee.wordpress.com/
Kathleen, I'm not familar with this ministry. Thanks for making us aware of it. And, I forgot the name of the mission we visited, but I'll add it when I remember :)
Good work. Yeah, THAT homeless fellow changed the world.
Still wish you'd get rid of that word verification. Google does a pretty good job of catching spam anymore. I always moderate anyway.
Thanks Gorges. I went in to get rid of word verification and go with just moderation, but it wouldn't let me. I might have to do it through Google Chrome. I'll keep working on it. Thanks! WB
Warren, I am so behind on my blog comments these days, but this post was so enjoyable, and I just loved the video! What a great experience for these kids.
Post a Comment