Kenzie (8th grade): We started off to day at the Contributor by serving breakfast to people that experience homelessness. I had the chance to be able to get to know a few of the people working for the Contributor that experience homelessness. We hopped in the bus and headed to the warehouse called Shower the People. We organized shower and hygiene products. We then headed to Mother to Mother where some of us folded baby clothes and sorted them. Others (me included) were carrying boxes and bins full of anything you could think of for a new mothers to load onto trucks to take to the community. I thought it was so amazing how so many people were dropping off donations while we were there for only around 3 hours. One fun thing I would like to share with you all is our BeReals on the trip. Let me explain what is first. It’s an app that gives you a random notification during the day to take a picture from the front and back of your camera. It’s a fun app to see what everyone is up to during the day. Down below are our BeReals so far. Today and this trip has been such a great experience and I’m excited to see what Thursday brings for us all.
Selena (8th grade): Today in the morning we went to the Contributor, and that is a newspaper where people experiencing homelessness were the vendors. We served breakfast, while they had one of their first vendor meetings after Covid. After that we went to the warehouse of Shower the People, and we helped them sort and pack hygiene kits and dental kits. When we finished our lunch on the go, we went to Mother to Mother where they give supplies to low income moms for them and their children. During our Connect time with Hope, we talked about how when you are connected and you do something, everyone you’re connected to is affected by your actions. While we were still connected with the string we made a map of our area, and while we did that we looked for ties to Nashville.
Sam (7th grade): What I found exiting was talking to people experiencing homelessness. I liked listening to their stories and how they are. A card game I found exiting was the game Mao, it’s a really fun game.
Dominic (College Sophomore): So we definitely had an interesting day today for the mission trip. After waking up 30 minutes late and having to rush out of the church, I was positive that the youth would be dead tired, unenthusiastic, and overall not happy to be there, but they proved the opposite. It was amazing to watch the youth jump into their work serving breakfast to the vendors working for the street paper The Contributor, and just forming connections with everyone they met. Afterwards, we took a quick trip over to Shower the People, and organization which focuses on delivering hygiene and dental products to people on the streets experiencing homelessness, as well as providing a place to shower and get cleaned up in a converted bus which now holds 2 functional showers. Although it was slightly tedious, the group worked hard organizing various hygiene products so other groups could put them into the care packages which would be distributed. Our final stop of the day was Mother to Mother, a group which accepts and redistributes products for mothers including diapers, toys, clothes, etc, where we worked for a few hours and filled an entire van and U-Haul with supplies for a trip they are taking tomorrow. To end the day, the group did an exercise in which we were all connected with a piece of yarn, and then drew a map of our home and church to show the importance and consequence of connection. It was a long, worked filled day, with lots of heavy lifting and sweating, but these youth stepped up, even under the circumstances, and took the challenge to heart and did some truly incredible work.
Geist Christian Youth Mission Trips 