Day Four—Nathaniel

Day four of our mission trip started on a Friday with an amazing breakfast of eggs and bagels. (which we have every morning but still amazing👌) We left USD at around 9:30 and arrived at our place of service at 10. On Friday we worked at a thrift store that was partnered with Alliance for Africa which provided support towards refugees. When a refugee walks into the thrift store they would be provided with a couch and plenty of other living essentials for free to start their lives anew. We were tasked with decluttering the store of clothes to make room to browse. We found all sort of clothes including an ugly, mustard colered, Apple mumu (picture included below) and other very, very interesting articles of clothing. The clothing we were taking out of the store was forwarded to people in need in Mexico. In total we got rid of a total of around 30 full size trash bags of clothes, this made the shopping experience much more manageable. After our service in the thrift store we went to the beach. Me, being the smart person I am, brought my swimsuit everywhere so I went swimming with my sister and Cate, who wasn’t so smart, went swimming fully clothed. We returned to USD after our unplanned visit to the beach and had a youth made dinner of potstickers, stir fry, and ice cream. As dinner concluded we played a game of “O heck” where I sadly placed second😔, had Compline, and went to bed. This day was very meaningful to me because of the genuine reaction of thankfulness from the shopkeepers. They were so thankful for our work and said that we did something that the small staff simply couldn’t take that much time to do. It was also a memorable time together as a group in the thrift store. We had tons of fun with finding intriguingly weird clothes and coming closer together as a group.

San Diego County fair!

Visiting Old Town San Diego

Sorting clothes at Alliance for Africa

Day Three—Caroline

Today we woke up bright and early to serve at Father Joe’s Village, which serves the homeless population of San Diego. They have a lot of services, including serving three meals a day to anyone who needs it, a shelter for families, permanent low-income housing, and much more. Our job was to serve meals to people in two different places: half of us worked in a kitchen serving food for families, and the other half worked in a kitchen serving food for any individual who wanted or needed it. I was working in the kitchen for the individuals, and I had two different jobs: for a while, I was scooping potatoes and gravy onto meal trays, but for a bit I was helping serve people with disabilities and people with pets who could not get into line as easily. We would talk to them, and get them trays of food and water. We worked from 10:45 - 12:30, when the cafeteria closed, and during that time we served about 685 people. After that, we ate lunch, and then took a 2.5 mile hike to a waterfall, which was beautiful! We splashed in the waterfall for a while and cooled off before hiking back the way we came. I had many wonderful conversations with a lot of the people on the trip, including Saleah and Nathaniel. We had a nice dinner afterwards, and then finished the day with compline. This day was rather amazing, both in terms of service and bonding time, but the service was especially amazing. Although I wasn’t always directly interacting with the people eating, I had some good interactions with people. One thing that makes feeding people especially fulfilling is that it impacts so many people directly, and we get to see all the people we are feeding. In many other types of service, we never really see the impacts of our service, but with feeding people, you see every person you help feed, and you can see the impact in all of the people’s lives. Sent from my iPhone

Day Two--Cate

On Wednesday the 24th, our second day in San Diego, we were woken up at 7:30 a.m. by either Riley or Mike. Thankfully, there were no pillow attacks involved! We gathered in our common room, ate breakfast, talked for a bit, and packed our lunches in brown paper bags. The adventure for the day was a gardening service project. We loaded into the van and headed to our first service site, Project New Village, a nonprofit organization that works to make fresh, healthy, organic food more accessible to everyone. We helped pack bags of freshly harvested produce for their grocery delivery program. We stamped the bags with the organization's logo, filled them with a variety of fruits and vegetables, and got them ready to be delivered. After that, we went to Mount Hope Farm, where we spent time gardening, planting, weeding, and composting. I worked on pulling out old, overgrown carrots and planting sweet potatoes. It was definitely a dirty job, but it was also a lot of fun. Next, we visited a local high school garden, where we helped clear out old plants and prepare the space for new ones. Throughout the day, we got to try lots of fresh fruits and vegetables. My favorites were the green beans at Project New Village and the tomatoes from the high school garden. They were both so fresh and delicious. Once we finished our service projects, we went shopping before splitting into two groups for a friendly dinner making competition. The group that cooked that night made chicken and fish fajitas. After dinner, we spent some time playing games together, including a fun game of touch football outside. We ended the day with our nightly Compline prayer. 

Today showed me that serving others doesn't always have to be something huge. Even packing bags of produce or pulling weeds can make a difference for someone else. I enjoyed seeing how Project New Village helps provide fresh food to people in the community, and it made me appreciate how much work goes into growing healthy food. Even though we got hot, dirty, and a little tired, it was worth it knowing that our work would help others. I'm grateful for the chance to serve with this group, and today reminded me that God can use even small acts of service to make a real impact.

Day one--Saleah

The first day at SFO we all met up wearing our T-shirts. There was a lot of conversation and catching up, but I honestly was too busy trying to stay awake to catch most of it. We made it through security alright, got some breakfast at Peet's Coffee and then we got on the actual aircraft. It wasn't that bad of a flight besides someone behind me and Caroline kicking our seats for no reason. 

After getting our luggage we got on a bus to get our van. After waiting at a broken crosswalk for 10 minutes, we only broke a few laws crossing the freeway and walking to the parking lot. It was a relief to finally be in a place with air conditioning after that crosswalk wouldn't turn.

 Thankfully our first stop was to go get lunch at El Indio, which had some amazing taquitos I got 5 of. I got to talk to and get to know a lot of the other people better though, including David and Clara.

 After wrapping up we went to get settled into USD. The dorms are really nice here, it's like mini hotel suites with more privacy. Caroline and I found out that our bathroom light sounds like a gargling garbage disposal, so that was interesting.

 After some time to settle in David guided us on a walk around the campus and we got to see some student stores and their church on site (the Immaculate). It had some really pretty architecture, plus Kyle and Cate were playing football outside. 

After our walk back we went and got dinner at a pizza place I forget the name of, in Ocean Beach. I was glad because we got a bunch of different appetizers and 2 different pizzas so you could pick what you wanted to graze on. We went to go watch the sunset afterwards (at Sunset Cliffs) and that was really pretty. Clara, Caroline and I found a hole in the cliff that has concerningly child-sized holes in the bottom of the fence around it. 

After the sunset we stopped by Target and got some snacks & stuff people forgot. I liked being at the store at night though, it's a change from everything closing before the sun is fully down in SF. Finally we made it home, did a compline reading and I crashed in my bed. 

For my first Mission Trip, it was a really nice first day. I got to make more of a connection with Clara, who I found out is from Los Angeles and David, our Wonder Voyage guide. I feel like if the rest of this week is like today, I'll be a lot more excited for the coming Mission Trips.