Since the beginning of the year, I’ve spent about 10 hours a week as the youth leader at The Journey UMC in Kyle.
We do all kinds of fun things together, including a summer mission trip. Last week I spent 5 days with our Jr. High youth at My Mission San Antonio, where we learned about homelessness.
The moment we arrived at Travis Park UMC, our luggage was taken from us and we were each given a trash bag. We were allowed 2-3 pairs of clothes and necessary toiletries for the remainder of the trip. Also, we couldn’t shower the whole time we were there (except we did have one trip to the local swimming pool). We slept in sleeping bags on the floor of the church.
I won’t tell you everything about our experience, but we did meet several members of the homeless community and learned a lot about how they came to be in their situation, how they live, where they sleep and how they get necessary items like food, water and shelter.
We met a man named Steve and he shared this piece of scripture with us: “Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.” James 2:15-17
Don’t worry, everything we did was very safe and we had a lot of fun exploring down town San Antonio.
I didn’t get the chance to take a lot of photos (it sort of ruins the experience to walk around with an expensive camera when we’re learning about sacrifice), but here are a few images that I captured while we were there. Some of them were shot on my phone and some with a Nikon D200.
And now for the Sr. High trip…