Hello to all who are reading this!
What a day and adventure it has been so far. For those of you who don't know our Mizzou Alternative Break trip is centered around Homelessness and Poverty issues in Dallas, Texas. We left Mizzou this past Friday at 5:00. The site leaders, Knipp and Morgan, picked everyone up in their respective vehicles. We have a Yukon named "Jeff", and a Town and Country named "Todd". So far they have been holding up pretty well, other than the fact Jeff had a "low pressure" tire right whenever we got into it in Columbia. Everyone made CD's to help the drive go faster. We numbered them 1-12 so nobody knew whose CD was whose....we learned that you can really learn a lot about a person by listening to their customized CD!
Our group has really made a great presence in the Twitter world (Follow us if you haven't already: @MAB_Dallas1). We are constantly tweeting and posting updates about our adventures. Last night we stayed in Tulsa at the Eastwood Baptist Church. They were kind enough to let us stay there for free. We arrived there around midnight, and woke up around 5:30AM (so not much sleep!). We hit the road for a few hours before arriving to a Denny's in small town Oklahoma. It was a great time, and very tasty! James (from Atlanta), had never been to Denny's and really enjoyed it.
We finished the drive and arrived in Dallas around 11:30AM today. Once we got to Dallas we went straight to Rainbow Days, a great organization that serves children in situations of high risk. Chandra, the lady who was our contact point, provided great insight as to what the organization was about. We helped put together Easter eggs and baskets for their EGGstravaganza event next Sunday. Chandra even ordered lunch for us (pizza). We are extremely thankful and happy that were were able to serve with such a great organization. After this we meet up with Lottie, the volunteer coordinator for Austin Street Center (Homeless Shelter). This was very impactful for many of us, considering half of us had never even been to a homeless shelter. Lottie showed us around the facilities, and gave us a lot of great insight on the topic of homelessness. You could tell how passionate both Chandra and Lottie were about people, which makes serving on this trip that much more rewarding.
One we finished serving for the day (around 4:00PM), we went to University Park United Method Church, our housing site for the remainder of our trip! Once we arrived, we were extremely thankful for the spacious and comfortable living space. There are several rooms (with couches), ping pong tables, a 4 square space, kitchen, a gym, and bathrooms with showers. It is so nice and comfortable! We played a lot of time playing 4 square with everyone, it was a great time! Once we settled in we went to the grocery store to purchase our groceries for the week. Each person on the trip was paired up with someone else, and assigned a night to make dinner that week. They then did their shopping together in order to prepare whatever meal they wanted for their cooking night.
After we finished up shopping, we went to Brandon's house (Brandon is an admission rep for Mizzou who has so kindly offered us his kitchen to cook our meals at for dinner this week, since we aren't able to at our housing site). His house was really nice, and perfect for our cooking situation. Tonight Knipp and Morgan cooked dinner. They made a Taco pie with chips and quest with some rice. They even made chocolate chip and sugar cookies for dessert! Dinner was great and we left Brandon's around 9:00PM.
Once we got back to our housing site, we had reflection on our day. We had some great discussion and talked for nearly 1.5 hours. We are all really excited for the week to come. It is now after midnight, so we are all headed to bed soon since we have to be out of here by 7:30. They have Sunday school here tomorrow. Tomorrow is our free day and we are still not sure what we will be doing, but I'm sure we will find some fun things to do in the city.
Hopefully wherever you are reading this, you are enjoying life and are happy. We can't wait for the week to come giving back to those here in Dallas.
Goodnight, until tomorrow...
-MAB Dallas 1
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