We are they.

A couple of months ago I had this idea to feed the homeless in our community. It wasn’t brilliant. It had been done a thousand times over. I remember sitting in a leadership meeting at our church one night and our Pastor asked us to break up in small groups. We were then instructed to brainstorm on some ideas we could do as a church and for our community. Our church and community. Are they one in the same? I wanted to break out of the safety and comfort of our church and gather up volunteers to serve lunches to the homeless community in Folsom. It was a great idea, my group loved it, and we presented it to all of the members and it was a huge hit. I walked out of there that night super excited and ready to conquer the world. A few weeks had passed and I didn’t hear anyone talking about it. There wasn’t any follow up and I thought the project was squashed. Until one evening I became a little brave after a few glasses of wine and I had this brilliant idea to email my Pastor. I told him I had this great idea at our meeting and I’m finally ready to bring it to life. I hit send and I sat back with a smile on my face and I waited. And waited and waited. The next day I got an email back from him, way more eloquently then I will describe it, saying “Great! Love your passion! Can’t wait to see what you do and let me know if you need anything.” I sat there for weeks thereafter during all of my planning and gathering volunteers and using whatever resources I could scrounge up and I found myself becoming resentful that he wasn’t helping me. And it was in those moments that I realized he was actually helping me. He sat back to watch whatever I had a stirring within me and allowed me to discover I was far more capable then I ever imagined.

Once I decided to run with the project, I created an invite through Facebook to ask for financial donations, volunteers, prayers, and I relied pretty heavily upon my boyfriend for his mad computer skills to help with the flyers and also for like, everything else. As soon as I posted the invite on Facebook, I received an outpouring of help from not only my friends and family but strangers as well. Messages like “what can I do” and “where do I donate” and “what do you need” were clogging up my newsfeed. It was honestly the strongest sense of community I had ever felt. And the best part? They weren’t offering to help me. Their hearts were in the spirit of the project and they were ready and willing to help the homeless. It was humbling, to say the very least.

In the beginning stages of planning, I wanted to just keep it simple and make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and pack snacks in a brown paper bag and call it a day. I had this romantic idea that all of the volunteers would just gather around the morning of the event and make lunches together and laugh and have coffee together and walk around the streets of Folsom feeding the hungry and making the world a better place. Man, was I wrong. What I quickly learned was that the homeless community in Folsom is vastly different from the larger and more populated cities such as Sacramento. Homeless shelters and food banks are typically found within metropolitan cities and you generally see homeless people roaming about the city that they live in. Smaller cities, such as Folsom, do not have the proper resources to fund and maintain such facilities so the homeless people tend to hide and feel shame and get harassed by the authorities for being out and about. I partnered with a local ministry called Powerhouse Ministries because they are pretty intertwined with the homeless community and they agreed to work with me to get the word out among the community.

I didn’t want to take the easy route. I didn’t want to slap some peanut butter on a piece of bread and sit at a park and hand them out as if they were little birds waiting for food to drop. Not that I’m saying outreach projects in larger cities are not warranted, it just wasn’t the direction I wanted to go. I changed the project from lunch to breakfast because I discovered that they tend to get up early in the morning to do what they need to do and beat the heat. I didn’t want to serve a continental breakfast because it’s easy. I wanted to make food with my own hands and I wanted to prepare it with careful thought and love. I wanted to bring church to the community and I wanted it to be mission style. I don’t even know if that term makes any sense, actually. My church travels for missions in Guatemala to serve those in need and financially, I just can’t do that at this time. Yet I can certainly serve those within my own community and hopefully change some lives within my own backyard.

Throughout the entire planning process for this project I prayed pretty heavily. And honestly, I’m not really the praying type. I will bow my head every Sunday morning at church and follow along with our Pastor’s prayers and I will whole heartedly say Amen afterwards. I truly don’t pray on my own because it’s weird for me. Anyhow, during this project, I prayed constantly. I prayed for people to show up to volunteer. I prayed for people to show up hungry (although I truly wish that every single person in the whole world would never have to feel that in their entire lives). I wanted all of the food that was donated and prepared to be eaten. I prayed to meet some people who loved Him as much as I do. One night I was doing some writing and painting to sort through all of my emotions. I painted a picture and after I was finished, I thought it looked horrible so I threw it into my sink. I started running the hot water to wash my paint brushes and all of a sudden the colors started to sort of make sense. As I shut off the water, I looked at my painting amidst my dirty dishes and a mess of colors and I thought it was nothing short of beautiful. I started crying and I thought to myself: “this is my church.” Church isn’t the Sunday show of lights and music and cameras. The production is pretty grand, but it’s not church. Church is a personal relationship with God. It’s falling in and out of love with Him. It’s getting frustrated and doubting and sometimes walking away. It’s rediscovering all of the reasons why you fell so madly in love. It’s a relationship. I sat there in my kitchen and I watched the colors fade and run into one another and turn into something magical. Something I almost gave up on. I knew right there in that very moment that I was meant to see the world through others eyes.

Fast forward to the day of the event. It was the first day of summer vacation and I’m not going to lie. I was terrified to wake my daughter up from a deep sleep fearing what she would do to me. She surprised me in the most beautiful way. Not only did she get up on time, but she started cooking the 5 dozen eggs that needed to be prepared for our breakfast without attitude and without hesitation. We left the house that morning early and with time to spare. I arrived at the church to set up our food and I looked around and took a deep breath and I prayed. Volunteers showed up with huge smiles on their faces and everyone just started doing something. Before I knew it, tables were set up, food was beautifully arranged, and we were ready to serve. I would say that during the nearly 4 hours we were there, we served about 25 people. I didn’t know what to expect, so I had figured enough food for 50 people. At one point, my sister came over to me and whispered “Look over there. You’re feeding children.” That day we helped serve needy families and the elderly and the homeless. It was nothing short of beautiful.

At one point we were all standing around and decided we should pack up some breakfast burritos and drive around looking for those in need. I went down the street with a few people including some kiddos. That’s when I met A.J. I describe him as a cat who has 9 lives. I dropped off some food to him and he was most appreciative and as I was driving away from him I asked if he needed anything. He said no and then as I drove off he yelled “Wait! I do need something. A life.” I asked him what his story was and he told me that I wouldn’t want to hear it. I told him it’s really the only story I want to hear. He’s been down for many years, lost all of his family, attempted suicide repeatedly and kicked his drug habit. I got out of my car to talk to him and get to know him a little bit and his smile was contagious. He was fully aware that God had another plan for him. He has not clue what that plan will be and he’s walking around with a fear of the unknown, but his smile was huge. His heart was warm. And he gave really good hugs. I was super lucky to have met him and I’m looking forward to seeing him again.

This project was so not put on by myself. I simply had the idea and I had the passion to see it through. Without the help from all of my friends and family, this would have never happened. They worked way harder than I did. A core group of us will be meeting again in the next couple of weeks to plan another event in September. We have an opportunity to see lives changing right in front of our faces and I’m so proud of my church. We didn’t need our Pastor to guide us through step by step. We didn’t need divine intervention. We didn’t need a copious amount of money or resources. We needed a group of people to show up with caring hearts to serve. It was really as simple as that.

John 17. If you haven’t read it yet, you should. If you aren’t a believer in Him, then disregard that part. You can even look at it from a different perspective. Doesn’t matter how you believe we got here. Doesn’t matter who or what you follow. You can believe in God. You can believe in nature and the sun and the moon and the stars. We are all here to help one another out. We all have stories. Some are great. Some are pretty terrible. Some we don’t even speak of. You don’t fully know somebody’s story until you have walked in their shoes and have witnessed the world through their eyes. But you can sure love them with all of your might. I will never again experience the world without remembering that we are they.

“..and these disciples know
That you sent me on this mission.
I have made your very being known to them,
Who you are and what you do.
And continue to make it known,
So that your love for me
Might be in them
Exactly as I am in them.”
John 17:24-26