Allie (4-10-09)

Today we went to deliver PB&J's to the homeless people in U-N plaza and Aaron, Garrrett, and I met a man that the homeless people call patch because has a hat, a pair of jeans, and a jacket made full of patches it was awesome!! :) (Picture top)

And then we went to the Laguna Honda Hospital and we took care of people that have alzheimers and dementia. While we were waiting we took a little nap in the car.(Picture bottom)

On the first half of the day parker and myself made deviled eggs and i met a lady named Janet Taylor (she had alzheimers). She told me that she had 2 boys, that she is 50 yrs old, and that she has been living in the facility for 10 yrs. I helped her mix the yolks for the middle of the eggs.

The second part of the day Garrett and I played BINGO in the Dementia ward I was very very fun. I was scared in the beginning and then near the end Garrett called me a Pansy and so I started yeling the numbers.

We went to Twin peaks during lunch and at the end of the day before dinner we went to the beach.



~Allie~

Hoot and Hollars at Safeway

~We are sitting at Safeway and we are giving people hoot and hollars. Today we took showers and it was awesome since it was our second and final shower of the week. ;] Around 8:30 this morning we went on a city search of San Francisco and we met a man named Memory and he answered a lot of our questions about the homeless situation and then we walked through the tenderloin and we also met a lady at the bus stop and she kept giving me compliments. she was cool. She also gave us a lot of information about the city which bus to take and whatever else we wanted to know.

Later in the day we went to the San Fran food bank and we put a 2,000 lb. bag into 1 lb bags and my table, Dondy,Holly,Parker and myself were the champs!! :) yea go us! we helped behind the scenes but we all felt like we were doing something

~Allie Lacefield~ <3

Rice Champs!

Dondy, Holly, Parker, and Allie were the rice packing champs at the San Fransico Mission Trip! We rocked!

Jesse Screeton, April 9th

Wow, what a tiring day! Today we started off by geting up early to go take showers. We went to the Salvation Army ,where we showered, and talked with Andy, the director of CSM, for a while. Our first task of the day was called City Search. We walked together around a part of the city and tried to get a feel for what being homeless would be like. We walked around a little, met a guy named Memory in Carl's Jr., had a guy offer us "some good pot", rode the bus, and met another man looking for someone to buy him soap since he might be getting a job. We also went to the six story library and talked with the social worker there. Her and Memory both explained how the city tries to help the homeless, and thier views on if enough is being done and what the city needs to improve their efforts. Our second task was working at the SF Food Bank. Us, along with another group helped to package over 2,700 lbs of rice during our few hours there. We ended the day with Indian food. It wasn't too great, but better than the Ethiopian food.

Norma Screeton Wednesday April 8

Wow, what a day of mixed emotions. Today we went to St. Vincent's to feed the homeless. There was joy in serving the needy and sorrow at the women who came in with childrennand compassionn for the women who quietly came in alone and left alone. The there was a lady who had anger issues and got out of control. As I was serving mashed potatoes I watched the director come and try to handle the situation and the lady just got angrier. She threw her plate of food at the director who was standing 5 feet in front of me and before I knew it the food she threw was hitting me on the side of my head and face. It was quite a a scary experience. After experiencing that encounter it gave me a greater appreciation for St. Vincent's.

Wesdnesday 4-8-09 Allie

This morning we went to St. Vincent de Paul a catholic ministry/soup kitchen that brings in homeless people and fed them. I helped on the women/children side, my line that I said a million times was... "Would you like salt,pepper, and bread?" then everything got vey crazy. The rule was you could only have 3 plates or trays of food and this one woman went back in line for her forth plate and the dirctor Jerry politely asked her to put it back and she said "No!" Shes threw the plate and cut Jerry's hand and Norma got all the food thrown at her so her hair was messed with potatos and chicken. It was a very interesting/scary/fun/exciting/awesome experiance.
Hoot & Hollar to Norma for dealing with all the food caught in her hair & still working her butt off.
WE MISS YOU ALREADY NORMA!! :)

Later in the afternoon we went to the Bay Area Rescue Mission (Kings Club) and we helped kids with homework & played with them there was one kid that was awesome at Basketball, I also met a little boy named Elisha that was learning sign language he knew his ABC's and numbers he was awesome.

for dinner we went to an Ethiopian resterant and i really liked it..

Day 3: Wednesday-4/8/09-Garrett Blank

Today, we woke up and went to St. Vincent de Paul (a place for homeless to get a good meal) to help feed the needy that came in. I believe I had one of (or THE) most rewarding job. I gave the actual tray of food to each person that came through the doors. Twice, I had a man come in that looked like any other come in. These two men looked me straight in the eye and said a phrase. "Thank you lord." The first time that it happened, I thought of it as just about any other kind of "thank you." However, it happened a second time about 2 minutes later. This time however, I took the phrase to heart, seeing through the eyes of the man. I felt as though for the first time, I was actually doing the Lord's work. Not just feeding the needy. It felt... empowering.



Most people were definately gracious for their food. About 97%. Ernie, a man Parker and I met during our break, was especially great. He was saying how greatful he was that people like us come in and help out in the place. As he left, he left us with a reminder that many of the people in the room were drug addicts or adicts of some other kind of object of abuse.



Then we went to the Bay Area Rescue Mission. Here, we met a bunch of kids from 2nd-12th grade. In the beginning, I felt like it would be fun and relatively easy. I actually quickly got into the event. We mostly scattered, but I joined a girl playing a Sonic racing game on a Gamecube they had. I helped a kid named Elisha learn some math. It was pretty fun. We helped do a bible study lesson for them with a skit and there was a bunch of laughing and stuff.

Today may have been my favorite day because of the "sign" I got this morning and the kids I met.

Our New Friend Steve

Good morningeverybody, as I am writing this were getting together for our morning devotional before Emily comes to take us away.
Yesterday was a day that gave me a scare at first. After our morning showers at the YMCA (many thanks btdubs) we went to a state funded school in West Oakland. Its philosophy is to teach through play, and our challenge was to spend time with kids in the classroom, teach them, and play with them. Honestly, I was scared at first, but the kids loved me; each one of us, as a volunteer, was a celebrity. Our work was immensly appreciated by the teachers and the principal.
After our lunch, we drove to Berkely. It was raining. We split up into two groups of five, and Emily gave each group ten dollars. 'Meet a need' was the name of our mission, and our challenge was to use the ten dollars to buy a homeless man or woman a meal or whatever they might need.
My perception of what I need is different from Steve's vision of what he needs to survive. Steve needs only his remaining teeth, the items in his backpack, and his books. His meals tend to work themselves out, his ever changing shelter tends to find him. He was hungry, he was more than happy to accept food. We took from his hovel on Telegraph Street to Milanese Cafe, an Italian pizzaria at where he couldn't even finish his pizza.
We talked for nearly an hour. We learned that he had been the victim of a terrible divorce, and that had landed him on the streets. He talked about his love of reading, that seemed to keep him hip with pop culture, such as the news of ....

gotta go, ciao
, ben egan

Proverb of the Day: 21:3

April 6, 2009

Bear with me on this, I don't know how to blog. I'm going just going to write my journal entry. I woke up and played solitaire and that is about all I did this morning. We drove to Oakland to help this organization called MedShare. They help donate medical supplies to third world countries. The medical supplies they donate are usually things thrown out that can still be used. About 2-5 tons of usable things are thrown out each day.

The second place we went was Project Open Hand. They deliver meals to people that cannot get out and get their own meal.

Bye,

Parker

Cameron Mara - Day 2

Today was the first day of doing volunteer work and we went to two different places: MedShare and Project Open Hands (POH).
MedShare was really cool because normally hospitals throw out all the things that were taken out of there packaging and they end up in landfills even though they are perfectly usable. What MedShare does is provide an alternative use for said medical supplies. They have placed bins in 14 different hospitals across California and on a weekly basis collect what is in the bins and sort out what is and is not useable (using a list of approved objects written by the FDA). We helped to do the sorting and packaging.
The second place, POH, is a really cool place. They cook and package meals for AIDS/HIV patients and depend on volunteers to deliver them because some of them are unable to leave their SRO (Single Room Occupancy) Hotel, those will probably be talked about later so I'm just going to leave that out because its a long description. Anyway, we split into two teams and each served about 12 meals at 5 different hotels.
I enjoyed POH more than MedShare. For one, MedShare has just recently started up in San Francisco and it still isnt very organized in how things are run, as compared to POH which has been around for 15 years and had State Funding. The main reason though was because when we were working for POH we got to go into the places where people lived and see how thankful they were to be receiving a small tray of food. It was awesome.
And, that was our second day in San Fran.

Funny Thing of the Day - Chest-tling (v). Wreslting while standing, and not being able to use any extremities of the body.

Day 2 Allie

We went to Med Share today and we sorted throughout medical supplies that hospitals donated to give to contries around the world to hospitals that dont have enough things to use.
http://www.medshare.org/

We also went to deliver food to people that have HIV and AIDS or just people that are homebound. It was with an organization called Project Open Hand. we walked through the city and went to hotals or apartment buildings that housed these people, and we gave them food.

Later in the night we talked with our CSM host Emily about what our favorite part of the day was how we felt and what we think our response as christians should be to help these people

till later
Allie

Norma Screeton

Day 2: Wow, I got to experience too much to tell, so I will just let you know about our first stop for the day. We started our day at an organization called Med Share. Med Share is a non-profit that collects medical supplies that hospitals would otherwise throw away and ships those supplies to countries in need. It was suprising to learn that the hospitals in the United States discard thousands of supplies daily that have never been touched and could be used in another country. It was sad to think about how many supplies are being wasted here in America while people are dying in other countries because they lack the proper medical supplies.

Day One...

Im sitting in the girls room. Holly, Allie, Norma, and myself. Hopefully this trip will be a huge eye opener. We went and took pictures at the bridge. In such a pretty city, there is so much poverty. I'm trying to figure out what is God's plan for me being here, especially since this was a last minute decision to come on this mission. For a long time, I've wanted to be a lawyer for IJM. Now I'm wondering if I have the guts for it. Im hoping this week will give me some sort of an idea and stretch me in more ways than one.

Til tomorrow,
Dondy Moreland

The night started with us taking a tour of different neighborhoods, one of the areas that really stood out to me was China town, it is the largest Asian populated areas outside of Asia. Along with that the human trafficing and sweat shops was huge in that area it really kind of freaked me out. We make America out to be this amazing place where you can start a new life or just escape all the bad things from your home country, when in reality we do to them exactly what they are trying to get away from. It's really eye opening to see things like that, and it makes you really thankfull for all the things and priviledges we have.
-Holly McCaig

San Francisco Day one (Allie)

I can't wait to see what will go on ,what i will see and how i will feel by the end of this week.

i am sitting at my bed at 5:26 pm waiting...
for something great or awesome to happen
with questions that i really want to be ansewered soon so i wont be pondering all these questions...
i am sitting at my bed at 5:33 pm thinking and waiting

We went on the prayer tour tonight with our CSM host Emily. She explained how all the homeless people live, where they stay sometimes and and where they sleep at night.
Interseting fact: the average age of homeless people is age 9 they used
Another thing we learned is that the government used "private" funds to put gold on city hall when the money they used was from the hospital across the street form city hall.

~Allie Lacefield~

Leaving Today

We are leaving after Bible class this morning. We're heading to San Francisco for 1 week of helping people who can't help themselves. We are working with CSM (Center for Student Missions). We will be doing things like working in soup kitchens, delivering meals to people who are dying of AIDS, and playing with kids at after school programs. The team is...
Aaron Redelsperger
Norma Screeton
Parker Allen
Cameron Mara
Jesse Screeton
Ben Egan
Garrett Blank
Allie Lacefield
Dondy Moreland
Holly McCaig

Please keep us in your prayers and check in here for pics and blog updates from the team. We'll get back on Saturday the 11th and be at church on Easter.