It certainly didn't go as we had hoped for. The objective was to get the homeless involved and make a differance towards something positive.
When we pulled up to park, we notice a large group waiting exactly where we'd planned. Amanda and I both felt excited to see such a great turn out, but once we walked up and asked who wanted rubber gloves... out came the excuses. In short, 2 of the 20 something people ended up helping our small team of volunteers clean up the area.
I like to give credit where credit is due, so thank you to Lisa, Ruben, James, Amanda, Ron, and Chris. I'm also thankful for the generous donation provided by Papa John's Pizza. I'd coordinated to have lunch provided for all volunteers when we finished the clean up, as a special blessing for their good works. I chose to not give advance notice of this, particularly because I wanted those with pure motives to partake. Needless to say, we had an abundance of left overs.
At first, I felt defeated and disappointed... but then I looked at things differantly. I felt good about what I had just done. I've never in my life done a beach clean up, nor have I ever in my life picked up cigarette butts before. When we were finished, we'd collected enough trash from the 3 blocks, to fill 4.5 large garbage bags.
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Friday, May 14, 2010
Quicker than ever! (Friday)
I'd have to say that tonight was a new record breaker!
I should probably start out by sharing that I've been fighting some infection/virus, I'm calling it a chest cold, for the past 11 days. It's difficult and painful for me to speak, especially loudly. We arrived a bit earlier than usual and found a parking spot immediately. We had help unloading the truck and setting up, which sped things up too.
Tonight was the first night that we didn't have any of the HSE students with us, because they left yesterday for their mission trip for the next month... which also means no worship music for us in PB. (Please pray for the students as they travel across the entire U.S. Country sharing the Gospel.)
Because I'm not feeling well, and also unsure of who we'd have to help us serve, we decided to not bring clothes or any of that stuff... just the food and a small box of hygiene materials. The message shared tonight was a devotional from my Pastor. It was about "Faith" and whether or not an individual has spiritual faith, it's an essential to everyday living and what a great reward it is to put our faith in He that is the 'Rewarder' of our faith. The entire message lasted about 4 minutes, which also made us ahead of our regular start time. It was 4:55pm when we started serving food. I stayed clear from the food and simply handed out waters, as to not risk infecting anyone else or contaminating their food. We had 40+ people pass through the line before some of our help showed up. It was refreshing to see John, Dana, and Reuben show up.
Everything went as well as expected. It went a lot faster then we'd expected too. By 5:35pm we had fed 80+people, with some getting second plates before the food ran out. We ran out before everyone got to eat, although some of them showed up later than 5pm, they'd expected food to still be available.... and I can't help but somehow feel responsible for them not eating tonight. It makes me sad.
I reminded everyone about the plans for the beach clean up tomorrow morning. Some said they'd be there waiting to get started. I pray that all goes well with that. While passing out waters, I was glancing around the beach and didn't really see that much trash laying around, so something tells me it'll be more of a morning of fellowship than anything else. We'll see what GOD has in store tomorrow though.
Good night!
I should probably start out by sharing that I've been fighting some infection/virus, I'm calling it a chest cold, for the past 11 days. It's difficult and painful for me to speak, especially loudly. We arrived a bit earlier than usual and found a parking spot immediately. We had help unloading the truck and setting up, which sped things up too.
Tonight was the first night that we didn't have any of the HSE students with us, because they left yesterday for their mission trip for the next month... which also means no worship music for us in PB. (Please pray for the students as they travel across the entire U.S. Country sharing the Gospel.)
Because I'm not feeling well, and also unsure of who we'd have to help us serve, we decided to not bring clothes or any of that stuff... just the food and a small box of hygiene materials. The message shared tonight was a devotional from my Pastor. It was about "Faith" and whether or not an individual has spiritual faith, it's an essential to everyday living and what a great reward it is to put our faith in He that is the 'Rewarder' of our faith. The entire message lasted about 4 minutes, which also made us ahead of our regular start time. It was 4:55pm when we started serving food. I stayed clear from the food and simply handed out waters, as to not risk infecting anyone else or contaminating their food. We had 40+ people pass through the line before some of our help showed up. It was refreshing to see John, Dana, and Reuben show up.
Everything went as well as expected. It went a lot faster then we'd expected too. By 5:35pm we had fed 80+people, with some getting second plates before the food ran out. We ran out before everyone got to eat, although some of them showed up later than 5pm, they'd expected food to still be available.... and I can't help but somehow feel responsible for them not eating tonight. It makes me sad.
I reminded everyone about the plans for the beach clean up tomorrow morning. Some said they'd be there waiting to get started. I pray that all goes well with that. While passing out waters, I was glancing around the beach and didn't really see that much trash laying around, so something tells me it'll be more of a morning of fellowship than anything else. We'll see what GOD has in store tomorrow though.
Good night!
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