Day 5: St. John the Evangelist

Here are two separate reflections from our service on Day 5.

Today we volunteered at the Episcopal Church of St. John the Evangelist in the Mission District. We learned about the Gubbio Project/ The Sacred Sleep Project, which St.John's takes part in. During the nighttime, the Mission District's streets are dangerous, and unsheltered people often have to stay up at night in order to be safe and to watch over their possessions. The Gubbio project's mission is to give unsheltered people a safe place within the Church to sleep, relax, and eat during the daytime. When we arrived at the Church, we split into two groups- my group deep cleaned the kitchen by wiping down the counters, the shelves, washing the many, many coffee pots, and cleaning the exhaust hood above the stove. The other group worked outside tidying the garden by picking up trash and removing the weeds. When we were done working, into two groups to grab lunch at either the Pupuseria and Pancho Villa or Pica Pica.

After lunch, we explored around the Mission District. Having attended elementary school in the Mission District, it was interesting to see how the neighborhood that I used to visit almost every day has changed since I graduated elementary school in 2015. We had a conversation about the Mission District, and how it has been and still is undergoing massive gentrification. We discussed how this can cause the displacement of people living there. To wrap up our excursion, we explored the mural alley. We then went back to the Church and finished our day by playing card games until it was time to go home.
-Meryt

Today our group headed back to the Mission District to work for St. John's Episcopal Church and their Sacred Sleep program. We were helping out with the Gubbio Project, a program that allows homeless people in the district to come inside the church and sleep during the day when they and their things can be safe from the threats of the streets. We were put to work cleaning the grounds of the church; picking up trash, scrubbing down surfaces, and sprucing up the area. After a morning full of hard work, we went our separate ways for lunch and reconvened at St. John's to eat and talk. A guide and coordinator from the church offered to take us on a tour of the Mission District murals, and we spent the afternoon discussing the history of the area and looking at the beautiful art people had put up.

Working for the Gubbio Project was an interesting experience. It was different from some of the other forms of service we've done because we weren't directly working with the people we were helping, nor were we doing something that directly impacted them. Cleaning was a very different experience from bagging food and distributing necessities, but it was still important service and it was very satisfying to do. Looking at the mural art was also an interesting experience because we got to see how different people are affected by the injustices in our world and how they communicate their personal experiences.
-Annie