'The Spirt of the Lord is upon me, because God has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. God has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.' - Luke 4:18-19
Sunday - The start of our Chicago Mission Trip. We all met in the church parking lot in the afternoon to load cars and start our journey. The high schoolers were all giving a playing card that corresponded to a vehicle so once that was revealed we got on our way to Chicago!
After a dinner break during our trip, we made it to Augustana Lutheran Church (the male housing site and where we would eat/cook most of our meals). We unloaded all of our gear and moved into our homes for the next few days. I stayed in a University of Chicago dorm (with two other adult leaders and the upper-classmen girls). (The other girls and female adult leaders stayed at a Youth Center.) Then, we met for our club (songs, announcements, message etc) and found out our color groups (the group that we would be serving with all week).
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| Yes, my mission trip housing was nicer than my college dorm room (well, it was a college dorm) |
Monday - Our first work day! Right after breakfast, the Red Team (Yay Emergency Buttons!) headed to Ashburn Lutheran School and Church to help with their summer program. We were not totally sure what our role would be as we traveled but we brought our ideas and flexibility. When we arrived we learned that we would mostly be acting as a friend to the kids (We would have some time later in the week to lead activities too). We got to break apart and go with different age groups as they had their discovery time (this week's theme was Asia) then we played games outside. After lunch with the summer camp kids, we headed off to meet other color groups at Feed My Starving Children in Aurora, IL.
FMSC is a meal-packaging site and probably my favorite experience of the week. The meals are packaged my volunteers (and the money to buy supplies is collected from donors) and then they are sent to one of about 70 countries. In our 2 hour session, we heard an opening presentation with a little video, got instructions, packaged the meals, and then had a prayer and closing. In our 2 hours, we (I think there were about 90 volunteers) packaged meals for 72 kids for a whole year! 121 boxes of meals! I've done similar projects to this before and every time, I'm blown away by how much impact can be made in such a short amount of time! The neatest part of our time at FMSC was that there were some Spanish-only speaking volunteers in our session. While we were getting oriented and hearing directions everything was spoken in English and then Spanish (which got a bit frustrating for people who were already familiar with the process), but at the end of our packing time the roles were reversed. A Spanish speaking women prayed and we had to get in translated into English. I had never been in a situation where I had to wait to understand. I felt guilty for being impatient earlier in our time at FMSC. Not speaking the common language must get frustrating. I also enjoyed that despite not being able to communicate well with words, we worked together toward the same goal! About 90 people with different backgrounds came together to help others in an impactful and life saving way! Whoa
That night we had some fun time at Portillo's Hotdogs (Italian beef sandwich and cheese fries! yum!!) and Xtreme Trampoline (so fun and a great workout!!) before a much needed good night's sleep.
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