If you want to see a few photos from the trip, click here to go to the photo gallery.
What an amazing time we had. In just little over 24 hours, so many different experiences happened to help deepen our junior highers' faith. On Friday night, we arrived at the CSM housing site in South Los Angeles, which is a warehouse converted into lodging for all the guest groups that serve with Center for Student Missions throughout the year. We had dinner at a Honduran restaurant and then proceeded to take part in a prayer tour. We stopped at a few different points throughout the downtown LA area and got out of our vehicles and prayed. One of the most memorable was praying in the parking lot across the street from city hall while lying down on the cold hard asphalt. The tour really opened our students eyes to all the needs in the city and each student saw something new that sparked a fresh Christlike compassion for our world.
In the morning, our group was split into two teams. Team Alpha was assigned the ministry of taking $3 to buy breakfast, and to take an extra $3 and find someone homeless and invite them to share breakfast with them. Sharing a simple meal with a homeless person goes lengths to break down barriers and build up a godly perspective towards others. The stories and insights that our students walked away with from that experience are remarkable. Then they helped prep lunch at the Midnight Mission.
Team Omega (the second half of our group) managed to get every single junior higher (and their fearless adult leaders) out the door by 6:00 AM to prep breakfast at the Midnight Mission. Afterward, during our morning devotion time, we had some free time to explore little Tokyo. We saw a curios sign for the "Go for Broke" monument and explored. The monument is dedicated to Japanese Americans who fought for the U.S. after being in interment camps. We got to hear first hand from one of the "Yankee Samurai" about how he served in the Eastern Theater of WWII. While our junior highers will likely never have a chance to speak with a WWII veteran face to face, they probably will only remember his story of how the soldiers went fishing with grenades due to lack of fishing gear. We finished the afternoon by serving in a Saturday afternoon kids club that is run by Faith in Christ Ministries, a church in Los Angeles.
Afterward we finished up by debriefing our experience by sharing what we learned during our time in the city and what God brought to our attention. We wrapped things up with a trip to LA 27th, a Nicaraguan restaurant with a special "squeaky" cheese and other delicious foods.
In our youth ministry, we believe that change happens as we take small steps each day toward following Christ more fully in our lives. This trip provided students with the chance to take one more of those steps, and as they did they grew in compassion, service, and seeing the world as God does. We look froward to seeing what their next steps will be.
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