Highlights! Highlights! Highlights! Destination Zero! Radial Youth ministry, where I've served at for about 4 years, does a serving event each year to help out areas in our community. This year at destination zero it brought new challenges and a set of beautiful blessings and life changing stories. Friday night was the kick off of the event and Dan, my boyfriend, another youth leader and myself took a group of kids around town to different challenges and community missions. At the end of the long night everyone grabbed their sleeping bags and the boys and girls split off and slept the whole night of the cement floor. We wanted to ingrain in the students that we are blessed and to take a selfless look on life and serve others for just a weekend straight. We wanted the students to sleep on the cold ground to also be able to relate to those who are houseless and don't have the privileges that we have on a regular day bases. A lot of the kids don't know what is in our world past their cell phones, facebook, and schools. It was a bite out of reality for a lot of our students. A good healthy bite that was much needed! Although there was a lot of serving opportunities one stuck out the most. It was the last mission on the last night and it was called, "Random Act of Kindness." All the kids brought 5 dollars and what we did was put all of it together and then brainstorm ideas of what act of kindness we could do for someone else. The kids thought for awhile and decided that they wanted to go to Walmart and buy a sleeping bag, pillow, Bananas, a sub sandwich, a gallon of water, Power aid, a Bible, chap-stick, hand sanitizer, and gum and give it to a houseless person that needed a boast out on the street. We all understood we couldn't fix them being houseless, but we wanted to lighten the burden as much as possible. It was wonderful that the students were able to understand how it was to sleep on the streets when it's cold and there isn't any resources other then the clothes on your back. We prayed that the Lord would send us the right person and we drove all the way down town. It seemed impossible to find someone who was houseless and everyone became a bit discouraged. Eventually after a long 45 minutes we found two men walking together with a shopping cart and we drove up next to them and Dan opened the door and asked if they needed any food or anything. To all of our surprise they responded, "No, no, no! We're okay!" After Dan insisted that we had gotten stuff for them they were shocked and began to say, "We could use some food, I guess." We handed them the food and pulled out the pillow and sleeping bag and they divided everything up! They repeated, "God bless you, God bless you, God bless you!" We were about to drive off and I stopped them for one more second and looked them both in their eyes and said, "Listen, there is a Bible with all the stuff we gave you and I want you both to read it. It has all the wisdom you need when your out here on the streets so please make sure you read it together!" One of the men replied, "Thank you so much!" And the other man jumped in said, "Without God we wouldn't be here, so we're really thankful for Him!"
That night a beautiful picture was painted in front of my eyes and I was so bless to be apart of such a little gift that spoke volumes to the students and to the men we were honored to bless. And let me tell you... it was SUCH an honor!
I give everything over to You Lord
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