"The Garden"

We watched another documentary tonight called "The Garden"  It was actually nominated for an Academy Award and it is an amazing story...

Visit www.thegardenmovie.com to watch the trailer and see a little bit about the movie.  I would really really encourage you to watch this documentary if at all possible...more than just the trailer.  You might be able to see part on youtube but it is definitely worth renting if possible or even buying..i am planning on purchasing this at some point too!!

This Garden is literally blocks away from where i live this summer and really tells the story of the area i am living and the sad reality that the people in South LA have no voice....what would seem to be clearly the right thing done for the people is not done and this poor community is again left helpless even when they do all they can to band together for justice.

I was again broken tonight as i watched the struggle of these latino people...another sad reminder of our fallen world.

Broken

My heart is just broken...broken for this city, for these people, for the pain that is being experienced by so many.  We have been learning so much while in training this week and my heart is overwhelmed.  We just watched some short clips and talked about human trafficking in the United States.  It breaks my heart to hear the stories of the young girls and boys that are caught in sex trafficking.  Many are apart of the foster care programs and then are bought and are now controlled by a pimp that receives large sums of money as these kids are sexually taken advantage of my men and women that pay to sexually abuse these children.  Others are kidnapped in rural truck stops...others are brought to America from foreign countries...all the for sex trafficking industry.  Only trumped by drugs and weapons, human trafficking is the 3rd largest industry in the United States today.  There is more sex trafficking of children going on in the United States than in any other country.

Then I think about the vast number of homeless people that i have seen laying on the street.... laying on cardboard boxes and tattered blankets..... pushing their cart of belonging or carrying a small backpack....the conversations with men that know they are on the streets because they are alcoholics but can find no relief from their addiction even though they have tried to get help.  

I think about the countless number of women who are caught in the sweatshops of the garment industry forced to work long hours for almost no money.

People trapped..and there seems to be no escape from all the pain.  I look around and i think about the number of people.... the faces i have seen that are in pain and i want to help..i desire to help...but the trap runs so deep...these people are stuck...there are no quick fixes here and it breaks my heart!

Families are hurting, parents cannot provide for their children like they wish they could so children are hurting.  Kids are not receiving the education that they need and because of that have a even less chance of succeeding in their future...trapped.

And i have been so blinded to it all.  I am grateful that God has brought me to this place to learn to be educated so that i can share with others the terrible pain that others go through every day in our country and hopefully i can do whatever i can to promote change...whatever that may mean..but right now all i feel is brokenness...

May God through his community of believers bring justice to our world.

Moldy Grapes - Ice Cream and Cookies

So today our morning was spent with Sister Luz..she is a wonderful Filipino woman that has devoted her life to ministering to the Latino community in LA.  She receives donation of food and clothing and pretty much anything...from nobody knows where...and as volunteer we sort through all of these donations.  The food that she gets is mostly expired so we pick through it to get the good food out and through away the old moldy stuff.  The chosen food of today was grapes and i dont think i have seen more fuzzy moldy grapes in my life...it was nasty!!!..but we do all as service to the Lord without complaining..i can just complain now.  So after sorting food to take with us we went to the park to put on an afternoon church service.  As a group we sang some song and then I and 2 others shared our testimonies.  After sharing a really cute little old latino lady came up to me and said in her broken English "Thank you so much...Jesus love me too"  It was so sweet and a great reminder of the diversity of the body of Christ.

The afternoon was pretty low key..just doing training around the housing site and then we went out for mexican food tonight and then went and had a special dessert treat.  We went to a pretty well know place in LA that is right next to UCLA..so its in a really nice area.  At this place for $1.50 they make you an ice cream sandwich..you pick whatever two cookies you want and whatever ice cream you want for the middle and enjoy!  It was wonderful!

The night ended with some major girl bonding...we are trying to do the 100 push-ups and 200 sit-ups workout routine.  So all six of us were crammed in our room down push-ups together tonight...we were laughing like crazy and sharing about our lives...real good quality girl time...i love it here and i am loving my staff more and more each day.  We are all very diverse coming from very different backgrounds but are coming together beautifully!

"Made in LA"

I know that it might start to sound redundant but today was just another great day.  I am really enjoying my time here in LA and all the new experiences that i get to encounter.  Today we had a little bit of a later start to our day so that was really nice...all morning we just did activities to get to know the city better and then to get to know our team better.

After lunch we watched a very informing documentary called "Made in LA" I would definitely recommend watching it...if possible...it was very eye opening to me.  It is a story documenting the lives of several Latino women that are garment workers in LA.  I was again shocked just to know that there are sweatshops in America and the conditions that these women deal with.  The women work 12 to 13 hours days and then are required to take their work home to continue sewing until 1 to 2 in the morning.  The sad thing to recognize is that for these women there really is no other option..they are not legal immigrants and so they cant get a "normal" job and so if they want money to support their family this is really the only option for these women.  Obviously in these conditions they are being taken advantage of...if they don't have another option, they will be paid the lowest wage possible.  The women are given about 19 cents for a 15 dollar shirt.  The store Forever 21 is one of the worst stores in the area for poor sweatshops and the Latino population tried to sue Forever 21 for the mistreatment of their workers but with little avail...that's another whole story to get into so i will spare you all the details.  I was just shocked by the whole story.

There have been times while I have been here that I have just felt so ignorant.  I feel like I have been so caught up in my own little world that I haven't taken the chance to look around to the injustices that are all around me in the United States.  Obviously i am not going to know all the details about what is going in specifically in LA...but i have been shocked over and over by the number of homeless people on Skid Row, shocked as I understand more and more the trap that the poor are caught in within LA, the presence of sweatshops, the lack of healthy food options and the over abundance of fast food restaurants in South LA...over and over again I see this is the world that I live in and it becomes hard to see these things and not know what i can do to make it any better for anyone.  I know that being here and leading groups into the city doing ministry and making them aware of the injustices going on in our world makes a difference...but the problems seem surmounting and overwhelming...

Just Another Day in Paradise

So the second day of training went well :) even though it started very early.  I got up at 5 30 am...i know shocking that i can even get up that early..and then we were on the road to go to serve breakfast at The Midnight Mission.  We served breakfast to almost 600 people.  I really enjoyed serving at that place...and thats a good thing because i will be going there once a week with my group!  

After serving breakfast we did a "Meet-A-Need"...we went off in groups of two with $5 and found someone to talk to and then met a need that they needed.  Jonalisa and I were paired together and we met a man named Jose and talked with him about his family and his life for about 30 minutes.  He hadn't had anything to eat yet.....so we went and bought him some soup and talked more.  He told us over and over that he was "sick" because he had a severe alcohol problem.  We gave him information about several shelters in the downtown area that help with alcohol and drug addiction and spent time praying with him.  I now hope and pray that he actually will go and get the help that he needs.  I know that in reality one conversation that he had with two girls was not going to change much in his life...but i pray that we planted a seed in his mind pointing him more towards getting the help he needs.  We left him happy and laughing after we had been joking for quite awhile.  When we left he said.."Thanks I'm happy now."  It was a good feeling knowing we had effected his day...making it just a little bit better.

Later in the day we went to The Salvation Army of South LA which i think will become one of my favorite places to minister in the summer.  This is just a place for kids and youth to come and hang out and have activities and tutoring for the summer and during the school year.  Today we just hung out with the kids for awhile...and they were all soooo cute...and in the future we will do craft and gym time and games and tutoring and the best part is...hip hop dance...all these cute cute cute African-American kids were dancing like crazy...they had choreographed dance moves...i cant wait for them to teach me how to dance...cuz i know that i for sure will not be teaching them!!  :)

We ended the day at a restaurant called Rosco's...i guess a infamous place in LA...its fried chicken and waffles..yes fried chicken and waffles together...wierd..i tried them together...waffles, syrup, and fried chicken all together but it was a little too much...so i just ate the chicken and waffles seperate....the waffles were great!

Now i am tired after a long day...all of us hosts are hanging out listening to 90s music...too much fun!!  There is talk of making a music video...we will see i guess....  :)

Temporary Made Permanent

Today we started our first day of training.  All the other hosts arrived..Courtney from Michigan, Billy from Arizona, Jonalisa from South LA, and Alyssa from California.  We just did some simple introductions to begin and then went out to our first ethnic restaurant, a Honduran restaurant.  We then left for our prayer tour.  The prayer tour is the first thing that we will do with every new group that comes...What this entails is driving the groups around south LA and the downtown area explaining everything about the area and the demographics...pretty much everything there is to know about the area.  This gives the group a good base knowledge for understanding the people they will be serving for the week.  It would take me forever to explain the whole prayer tour...the tour itself taking about 2 hours so i am just going to explain one "snapshot" that stood out to me and then hopefully the rest of the info of the prayer tour will come out later in future blogs...

As we were leaving the south LA area and transitioning into downtown we stopped at a school that is called the 9th Avenue School.  This school was founded in the 80s and was going to be a temporary fix to an immediate need.  There was a large population of kids that was beginning to develop in this warehouse district on 9th Avenue as children that were homeless living mostly on Skid Row and children of garment worker (those that work in sweat shops making clothing).  The population of kids in the area was growing as homelessness was growing and the amount of garment worker, working long hours that would bring their kids to work with them.  The school was founded with movable trailer type building to give kids a school but not thinking this would be permanent.  This school obviously has become permanent as it is still in existence.  The school was built to house about 500 kids and there are about 650 in attendance since last year.  Also 99% of the kids are on free and reduced lunches...with the lowest percentile averages on their math and reading scores.  As we stood in this school yard, the poverty trap just really struck me.  This school that was meant to be temporary has now become permanent as there has been no long term fix for these families stuck in homelessness and sweat shops...the problems have only seemed to increase.  The hope seems no better for these children that are receiving a poor education while extremely low math and reading scores.  It saddened me immensely.  We stood and prayed for the kids, the teachers, and hopefully for more programs to be developed to help these kids in need.  Some of the ministries sites we will hopefully be working at this summer, will be working specifically with these type of kids.  As my heart broke for these kids, my love for them already began to grow and i am excited to get to love on them this summer...

Day one of training and i am already amazed at the possibilities that God has in store for me this summer.

New Beginnings

I arrived in Los Angeles on Saturday night the 23rd and now have been here for 2 days.  I haven't really been doing too much but i am very much ready to get started and excited that training starts tomorrow.  I have met three of the seven other hosts and everyone else should be arriving today or early tomorrow morning.  Chris and Nikki have been here as hosts in the Spring since February and McKenzie just got here yesterday.  Chris is from Chicago, Nikki from Arizona, and McKenzie from Oklahoma.

Our housing site for the summer is in South LA...the only other white people around are me and the other hosts for the summer.  We joke that the only window in our whole house is the little tiny peep hole on our front door.....safety is more important than windows i guess....so during the day we sit with our door open just to get some natural light into the building.  In the morning I feel like i live in a cave because its so dark in our room because we have no windows...it makes getting up in the morning very difficult because i have no internal clock in the morning to tell me to get up in the morning.  I think it will be harder and harder to get up as the summer wears on and i am more and more tired...but I'm ready and excited.

As of now i don't know much more than i did when i got here...but by the end of next week...a week full of training...i will be fully equipped to lead a group through a week of ministry...i hope  :)