go missions las vegas 2008

here goes my first attempt at a real blog post .. with pictures and everything. this could be long. haha. this almost might take a couple of posts..

so over march break i went to las vegas on a missions trip with a team of 21, youth from rock church in sackville. it was exciting to be going on a trip with no parents :D:D im pretty sure everyone was nervous (but excited) to go.

after a bit of trouble, (cancelled tickets, and 2 hour delay in chicago) we ended up getting at the rescue mission (homeless shelter where we stayed at in lv) at about 2 30 am (6 30 am NS time). thankfully pastor mike let us 'sleep in' until 7 30, which was nice. that day we went to the 'dream center' which is pretty much a wear house filled with stuff that companies donated (items that people returned because they thought there was something wrong with it) we bacially had to sort through the stuff and take of the paper that was attached to them saying why they were being returned, and cross out the bar code. the items would then later be given to homeless people. it was insane to see the amount of stuff that people would return, and there was nothing wrong with the item.

i really enjoyed going to the dream center and helping out, it was a lot of fun, and made us all see how .... i dont know what word to use. but we should be thankful for what we have, and im glad that companies donated these items to go to good use.

after that we went to the new ywam (youth with a mission) base that they just bought which hasnt been all done up yet. we went there to get ready for sack lunch give away. sack lunch give away is when we get into partners and everyone makes 2 lunches; one for your self and one for someone else. then you go up to a homeless people and eat a lunch with them and talk with them. me and jessica greenwood were partners and most people decided to give away all the lunches and not eat one for themselves. (we had eaten 3 times that day; mcdonalds for breakfast, and then they gave us mcdonalds again at the dream center, and then we had lunch at the shelter) we walked for about 20 minutes to a park where a lot of the homeless people 'hang out', i guess you could say. sack lunch give away was a bit challenging. it was the first out reach task we had really done. the first person we went up to was a olderish man, and he invited us to come sit on his cardboard box with him. we were talking to him for a couple of minutes, and then his wife/girlfriend/i dont know what to call her, came over and started swearing and yelling at him, and me and jessica. me and jessica didnt know what to do..so we just sat there. she was just yelling random things like ''you arent supposed to keep secrets from you wife'' and then someother choice words. then the man, fairly embarrassed, was like 'girls im really sorry, im really sorry' kinda hinting for us to leave, so we got up and left, and me and jessica started balling our eyes out. later we found out that the lady went up to one of our leaders and was getting mad, and saying stuff like what do you think you canadians are doing here. and i guess she was mad that we 'two young girls' were sitting with her husband with our legs open Indian style. (we were sitting cross legged, and i guess she took it the wrong way and though we were prostitutes) eventually we moved on from that and gave one lunch to a lady that had just gotten a ticket in the park (for being drunk i think) so she couldnt stay to talk with us. we then got to sit down at a picnic table and talk to a lady. she was a huuge talker and it was hard for me and jessica to get a word in, but that was alright. haha. it was hard to hear that she didnt know where her kids were, and she hadnt talk to them in awhile. as the trip went on, we realized that a lot of the homeless people didnt know where their kids were and hadnt talked to them in quite sometime.

that night we had a scavenger hunt on las vegas boulevard (the strip). it was a lot of fun, and we were in groups of 4 ; it was me, beth doucette, (yes, confusing with 2 beths) annie, and alisha. it was a lot of fun, and we got really into it. we had to take pictures of random things, and take some videos too. i really think we could have won, but after a couple of days annie deleted most of our pictures (they hadnt found the time to check peoples cameras to see who won) so only like 1/2 of them were there when they went to check them.

i think thats a long enough post for a bit, i'll try and do another one today maybe. i'll post more pictures later too. if you have facebook, all my pic's are there, so check them out if you want to.