In our morning meeting we discussed Matthew 25 and James 2. My team went to the warehouse up the street and cleaned and organized. I didn't end up doing too much because the jobs that needed done were taken by other people. We were there for a while, though. We left for lunch and then came back to finish up.
After we finished at the warehouse, we packed up food and went to Sara Frances, an apartment complex (I think) nearby, to do another food line. This time we were in the lobby of the building. There were mostly older people in line. There were so many characters!
The first lady was in a wheelchair, and we later found out that her spine was metal. I don't recall what her story was exactly, because I never talked to her, but I believe she's been paralyzed for a while. Her name was Ruth.
One man that came through the line stopped at the girl next to me, exclaimed that she was beautiful, and stared at her, open mouthed, for a good thirty seconds. He did stop for a second to tell me I was decent looking, but apparently I was nothing compared with her! It was quite entertaining :)
Another man that came through the line was short, had long-ish silvery hair, pink heart shaped sunglasses, gnarled feet stuffed into sandals, a tie-dye shirt, and a disco ball necklace. He wandered around the lobby performing hymns for anyone that would pay attention. The rumor was that if you looked at him, he'd start flirting with you. To be honest, this made me a little nervous (I was remembering the creepy guys from day three). He came by the line later and thanked me for helping out, and asked me to thank the rest of the team. Maybe he was the flirting type, but I was ashamed of withholding my love from him to avoid a potentially uncomfortable situation.
As people continued to go through the line, a friend came up and was talking to me. He had a boot on his foot and he was complaining about it. I told him (essentially) that there were other people around that were hurting worse than him, so he should go talk to them and hear their stories rather than accomplish nothing by complaining about his foot. (Note: That's the idea of what I said to him - I made my point a lot more nicely, though). I realized, though, that I was just standing there in the food line - I wasn't actually getting anything done. I should be out there talking to people!
So I left the food line and went to talk to a lady in the corner. I was walking toward a lady with huge red glasses, who was sitting in a wheelchair. However, I got distracted by the lady behind her. She was wearing all purple and her name was Sheryl. I sat and talked with her for a little bit. She told me she didn't live at Sara Frances, but across the street. She came by so she could see everyone, and maybe take some food if there was any leftover. Mostly she just wanted to visit, though. She said she'd been friends with David (leader person of City of Refuge) for years. I asked her to tell me some about her life - I wanted to hear her stories! But she pointed me toward Sweet Pea, the lady with the red glasses.
I had heard about her from the C.o.R. team - Sweet Pea wanted hugs from everyone. She even counted how many people came in our group so she could keep count and make sure she didn't miss anyone. Periodically, she would interrupt her story telling to count everyone in the group and make sure no one left without giving her a hug. It was so precious!
I sat with her for a while and she told me that she likes Jeopardy and House, and another show that I didn't recognize. She told me that she broke a tooth when she was ten because she kept telling her twin brother to push her higher and higher on the swings and then she fell off. She told me how her twin brother died - he drowned, and so did the man who went in after him.
We left before I could hear enough of Sweet Pea's stories. When we got back, we just hung out until dinner.
After dinner we went to the warehouse for worship. Malorie sang, and told us that it didn't matter if you knew the words to the songs or not - you didn't have to to worship.
Afterward, we went back to the City of Refuge and hung out, and I was able to talk with one of the students for nearly an hour. It was really great to talk about different things about City of Refuge, service, and college. (And I'd like to talk more!)
No comments:
Post a Comment