March 14, 2013
As you all know I went on a missions trip to downtown East Hastings in Vancouver. The trip went really great and I think the whole team was stretched but also had a lot of fun. The trip was broken up into two parts. The first part of the trip was spent at a Church called New Beginnings. New Beginnings was a Church that served mostly aboriginal people who lived in the East Hastings area. At the Church we got to help out at youth group and lead sunday night worship (Their Church services did not start until 5pm, instead of in the morning).We also got to help out with a program called Say Yes, do home makeovers and helped with renovations for the Church. The program called Say Yes was a program that helped kids with their homework played games with the kids and also fed them a meal because many of them do not get fed very well. The homemakers were my favourite, we got to go to many different families houses and got to help them out with whatever jobs they needed help with. The home home makeovers I did were painting, organizing boxes and emptying an apartment. I really liked doing the home makeovers because I loved seeing the joy on the families faces and seeing how thankful they were for our small tasks. It felt really good to be able to help those families. The second part of the trip was spent at a soup kitchen called Potter's Place. At Potter's Place they have two Church services everyday one is a 10am and the other is at 9pm and right after the services they serve a meal. I really loved helping out at Potter's Place and being able to experience a little bit of East Hastings. At Potter's Place I was able to share my full testimony at one of the services which was a really stretching experience. I knew that being in that area that the people could really benefit from my message so i decided to share it. I was also able to develop relationships with the people at the services it was really cool to be able to hear there stories and pray with them. Some other things that we did while we were down there was shower at the place where the people on the streets shower in order experience and understand that lifestyle, we also got to hand out roses to women on the street as well as handing out sandwiches. I really loved Potter's Place and would love to help there again some day.
A funny memory from this trip is from a day where I was exhausted. When I am really tired I get crazy and boy was I crazy. I was supposed to be cleaning the kitchen or something when Evan a member of the team walks in. ( you have to know that even when you are not tired Evan is so funny anyway). Since I was tired everything was even more funny. Anyway, Lokadia another team member was making fun of his hair because it was really greasy because we did not get to shower very often. Then I some how came up with the idea of having hair like lego people do so that you can just pop off your hair and put new hair on so that you wouldn't even have to shower and it would not be greasy. Then Evan starts making a nose for "popping" off your hair and it was just a mess from there I could not stop laughing. It was not even a normal laugh it was my crazy Brookelynn laugh says Evan. Anyway I am that sure if you were there you would of found it funny too.
On this trip there was defiantly some difficult stuff that we saw. Something that was really difficult for me was when we were handing out roses to women on the street. At this point we had been serving at Potter's Place for a few days and I was getting pretty comfortable on the streets or so I had thought. The girls were supposed to be the ones talking and handing out the roses but there had to be guys with the girls for protection. We were doing really good until us girls went up to some girls in the park planning on giving them roses, thinking that the guys are behind us but instead they stayed back. Since it did not look like we had guys with us a guy on the street started calling us sexy and then got really close to me and asked for a rose. After that he would not stop staring at us. This was hard to experience because you would expect this from a guy on drugs but with society today many guys act like that when they are not on drugs.
Durring the trip I saw God working in all of the team members. God was helping all of us with courage and trust to know that He is with us at all times. Around me I saw God working through the people at New beginnings to have their ears open to what we have to say and I really saw God softening their hearts. At Potter's Place I saw God working through the lady that started Potter's Place with her amazing faith and I saw the people's hearts who came to the services soften. I also saw God working through myself. Through out the trip God gave me the courage and the strength to push through no matter how tired I was. God also taught me how important it is to follow what His will is for my life and not my own. God gave me the desire in my heart to share my testimony to those people who needed to hear it. God did amazing things in, through me and around me. I think all of my team members would agree that God was defiantly present in this trip. There are many more stories to be told about my trip so if you have any questions or would like to know more please feel free to ask. I would also like to thank all of you who donated money for my missions trip making it possible thank you so much!
