Serving the Homeless

I drove some of the youth to a church downtown that has a daily soup kitchen in order to serve the homeless.  It was the thing most of the youth put as their number one desire to serve.  What a blessing those youth were to the homeless, to the church members, and to me!

These youth attacked their jobs with vigor and enthusiasm.  They worked tirelessly without complaint.  They wanted to serve more.  I wanted to cry tears of joy and sing praises to God, whom blessed me with such a wonderful youth group!  The parents of our parish should be well pleased with their children for I know my own have astounded me with their joyfullness in serving those less fortunate than themselves.  I truly wish I had words to convey their servants' hearts.

These youth had to get up early on a school holiday to meet at the parish so that I could fight rush hour traffic to get to the other parish on time.  They helped to get breakfast plates ready, serve the breakfast plates, and to clean up after breakfast.  Normally volunteers have a couple of hours off before preparing and serving lunch.  However, the parish priest had died suddenly the week before and the members needed to get the church cleaned for the funeral that was just around the corner.  So the children were asked if they would help.  Absolutely!

So for the next hour and a half or so these kids worked their fingers to the bone cleaning not only every surface they could see but emptying out cabinets, fridges, freezers, and the tops of these - cleaning the insides (or tops), and then going through the "stuff" and tossing expired or opened items and reorganizing the remaining items.

They got about a 15 minute break before it was time to start making lunch! They were truly inspiring and they interacted with the homeless so sweetly, like they were just any ole person they met at the park.  There were even requests from the youth to come back for the funeral so that they could help serve at the reception following.  The reception would be for the homeless to share memories of Father J. and to simply have fellowship with one another especially since they wouldn't be able to make it to the burial.  After all, the church is like their home and Father J treated them so kindly and lovingly.

I took a whole bunch of photos!  They are all up on the church website so go take a look at these youth that blessed everyone they interacted with!