Hello friends and family!
It was a great first day of service for us here in Dallas, but a long one as well. It was another early morning, as the church we are staying at has weekday classes for youth. Compound that with a late night of watching movies and playing Guitar Hero, and it makes for a rough morning.
Nonetheless, we made it to our first service site on time, The Pleasant Grove Food Pantry Community Garden. We were greeted by Becky, a friendly lady wearing rain boots and a shirt with a funny garden pun on it. Needless to say, we all didn't know what to expect, and the first part of the morning was a pleasant surprise. We all tried a new breakfast pastry, called Stollen. We thought Becky was going to chop off every single one of her limbs in the process of slicing the loaf of Stollen, as she waved around the knife introducing herself and her community garden.
After some morning coffee and pastry, we managed to get some work done at the garden before heading to Dallas Life, a local shelter downtown. There, we served lunch (pizza) and washed dishes for the shelter. This was our first experience of directly interacting with those who we are serving, and it felt great to make such a big impact by doing such a small thing. Our time at Dallas Life was great, and following that we made our way back to Becky's to continue our work there.
We cleaned up the yard of it's fallen tree branches and limbs, and cleaned out the grape vineyard. Next we got our hands a little dirty, as we harvested some turnips for Becky. We held a competition to see who picked the biggest turnip, which Morgan won. Our turnip harvesting wasn't all fun and games though, as Meg managed to have hundreds of fire ants crawl on her legs and eat her alive. Okay, she didn't really get eaten alive, but her and Taylor walked away with more than a few bug bites on their ankles. Overall, it was a good time helping Becky clean up the garden, and we're excited to return tomorrow.
Our last stop on the day was at Family Gateway, a support center that helps homeless families. Half the group prepared dinner, while the other half tutored children. Between organizing the food pantry, cleaning grills and cutting cucumbers, the time in the kitchen was very busy, and managed to help out in a big way for the full-time workers staffed at Family Gateway. Morgan was proud of her work frying the catfish, while Zach became a world class bakery chef. James and Jacob got a little out of their comfort zone tutoring children, and had a good experience learning how to better patiently work with kids.
It was a long day for us, but a successful one. We learned a lot about our expectations for the week, and our reflection time was spent talking about how our perspectives for the week have evolved since we've been here. We are very excited for the coming days to follow, and we hope you enjoy what we have to tell you.
Until tomorrow!
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