SHP 2 (Houston) - Health (1)

Day 1

Sunday March 22, 2015

Today was all about being Gumby.

            We traveled all Friday and Saturday, and got to Houston Saturday afternoon. We are staying at a church right in Downtown Houston in a convenient location close to the train that goes to major destinations in the city. After going to Walmart and buying all the essentials for the week, we settled in and called it a night.


            When we woke up this morning, everyone was really excited to do the first day of service. Our lunches were packed, our shoelaces tied, and we were out the door. We got to our site, and waited for them to tell us what needed to be done, and they told us they were full with volunteers and didn’t need us. There was a mix of emotions from the group, some were angry others sad that we couldn’t serve them in any way. Danielle said that for her “it was still impactful, the fact that they had too many volunteers”. It was a tough way to start off our week to say the least. But we didn’t let that ruin our day. We called our housing contact and found a place they work with that needed help cleaning and organizing there facility. So we hoped in our cars and drove to the International Seafarers Center.


    Non of us had previously know much about cargo shipping and the lives of the workers on the boats, but at the center we met Rev. Lacy Largent who informed us on all the happenings of the port. The International Seafarers Center is a place for those workers on the ship to come and do a multitude of activities from calling home to the familes, using the internet to skype those people they haven’t seen in months, play basketball, ping-pong, billards, catch up on the latest news, and much more. Life on the ships is not ideal and if it were not for the International Seafarers Center some of those workers would not go home the same personal mentally. So what we did was help do odds and ends tasks so that the center staff could focus on more important things. We put together care package boxes, labeled magazines that had been donated, cleaned inside and around the facilities. The whole group really enjoyed getting to serve at the International Seafarers Center. If we hadn’t have been turned away at our first site, we would have never known this place existed and never have meet the amazing Rev. Lacy Largent, a woman with a huge heart and great passion for serving others.

            In the afternoon we visited in the museum district of Houston. At the Contemporary Arts Museum we got to meet the artist, Mel Chin, who’s work was on display in the exibit and hear him talk personally about the pieces he made and the stories behind it. We then visited the Holocaust Museum and saw the stories of the horrific events that occurred, and why it is so important to never forget what happened. As the day came to a close, we met up at the beautiful Herman Park to eat dinner with the other MAB group the traveled to Houston and some of the Alumni that are in the Houston Texas Tigers (a chapter of the Mizzou Alumni Association). We had a blast meeting everyone, especially Tommy (one of the Alumni’s sons) who loved to talk and throw the ball around with us.