As we approach Thanksgiving, the campus ministry department put on a Homeless Awareness project for the students to participate in. For three nights, a group of faculty and students slept outside in the school courtyard with just cardboard and sleeping bags. Our guest speakers were formally homeless people who shared their story of life on the streets. The goal of the exercise was get outside the comfort zone of where we sleep and to learn to empathize with the homeless. At the evening reflections, I heard students comment on how grateful they were for all that their parents provide and how nice it is not to wake up with a soaked sleeping bag because of morning dew!
Another event was the freshman service trip to Skid Row where we volunteered at the Midnight Mission. Last time we worked at the food kitchen, the chef had us cut onions for hours, which was obviously painful...... but this time we had a better task - carving turkeys! This shelter is expecting to feed over 4500 people a Thanksgiving meal, and so we had some serious turkey to carve to help them out. Needless to say, myself and the group of freshman became experts at this skill and I'm going to volunteer to cut it on Thursday!
Sadly, this will be the first Thanksgiving I've had to miss from my family, as I will be traveling to Phoenix with the other Los Angeles JV's. I wish I could be there with my family, but this is a JV tradition for us to travel to our sister houses in Arizona (it gets lonely out there since the rest of us are in Cali!). I'll have an update on the weekend when I get home, but what I know now is that the 2nd largest city in the US has all of its citizens trying to get out of LA to see grandma right now... at it's only 3:30pm. I just CANNOT WAIT to leave at 7pm.... I'll just have to remember what my mom has always told me - patience is a virtue!
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