Today was a free day. When we woke up we had breakfast and
headed out on the road to site see. We took the Metro again to downtown. Mr.H
set up a tour for us starting at the Old Post Office Building in downtown D.C.
We saw a lot of different monuments like Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument,
World War II memorial, Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, Korean Memorial, the
White House, Capital Building, Arlington Cemetery, and so much more. We got to
tour on a yacht and see Washington D.C from the Potomac River. Some of us got
nauseous from the waterL
When we got back to the to the Old Post Office building, we decided to climb
the bell tower (very high!). We went all the way to the top and saw the
Washington monument and the top of apartment buildings and a lot more. There
was also a food court and areas to shop so we went shopping for souvenirs. We
went out to eat then headed back to the Metro. We had wait for a while in the
station, but had fun looking at each other’s pictures.
When we got
back we were the first ones there, so we showered and packed. We figured out
that we had to be up by five in the morning to start packing our things into
the van. We had small group till about eleven at night and said goodbye to all
our friends from Georgia and Josh the Team Effort coordinator at Urban Outreach
head guy. We went to bed and were ready to get up at five in the morning.
This week
has been a lot of fun. I feel I grew spiritually this week. I also am more
aware of what is going on in the country and in the world considering hunger,
homelessness and all of that. Before I thought it was no big deal I never
really saw any homeless people or met any. We went to five parks with fifty
bags of food and they were mostly gone after three parks. I also learned that
if you have a job that does not mean you have a home, there are people who live
out in the streets who have jobs but are not paid enough to afford a house. The
shelters are very messed up to in D.C. If you go sleep in a shelter your stuff
most likely will be stolen.
The day I
enjoyed the most was Wednesday when we worked with the kids in the elementary
school. My group had Mr.D, Justin, Holly (Team Effort Staff), Brittany, and me.
We moved and organized books in the school library and moved furniture. When we
started to move furniture there were two ten year olds that helped us move.
They were very cool to hang around with and hear stories from them. We then
went for lunch and played with the kids in the pre-K class. Some how all the
kids were on everyone’s shoulders. They enjoyed being on our shoulders
especially Jeremy’s.
- Emily W
This opportunity to go on the mission
trip is one that I will not forget. Having the opportunity to not only serve
God by helping out those who need it but also the opportunity to grow as a
person. Many people go into mission trips believing that they will change
people’s lives, which is a great attitude, but I believe it isn’t totally a successful
mission trip unless you as a person are changed as well. We were blessed to
have some great leaders at Urban Outreach. Josh, Holly, Lauren, Renee, Spike
and Pastor Will were fantastic people who really helped out a lot and not only
helped us grow spiritually with their chapel discussions that they led, but
they were always ready and willing to help us with anything that we needed.
My Favorite part of the trip was
Wednesday when we helped out at the elementary school. We moved schoolroom
furniture and cleaned some desks; we organized the school library and hung out
with some of the students. My favorite part of this was getting to play with
the students. Some of them just broke my heart. There was this one little boy
named Zach who captured my heart the most. From the moment I met him, he was
crawling all over me. He would not let me go for a minute. The first time I
tried to leave, I set him down on the ground and he turned around, looked me in
the eyes and said, no, don’t go, and wrapped his little arms around me as tight
as he could. Needless to say I stayed a
little bit longer until story time was done but then I had to leave. This time
when I set him down and he knew that I had to leave, He got really mad and
started to hit me. I promised Him I would come back during lunch and he calmed
down a little. We went back for lunch later and played with the kids some more
and gave endless numbers of pony rides and shoulder rides to all of the kids.
We later found out from Zach’s teachers that the reason why he gets so
aggressive when people leave him is because he has taught himself to cut any
ties from anyone who leaves him so he isn’t hurt when they are not there
anymore. My heart still hurts for little Zach and I will never forget him.
Getting to see the sights, meeting
new people, and growing as a group are all good things to do. But it is the
people that you meet that touch your heart that is what will change you
forever. I believe and know that I was changed by this experience as well as
many, if not all of my fellow “family” members (team members). This was
definitely a successful trip because my life was changed through everything
that happened. Thank you for all of your support, whether it was financially or
through prayer, it was appreciated by all. I hope this helps give an insight
into some of the things that went on during the trip.
- Jeremy J.
Well my journey to and in D.C. was
filled with many excitements along with many challenges. The first day we
walked some streets of the local D.C. area and picked up trash that was lying
around. Some found some weird things like wigs, articles of clothing, dentures,
female products, and we even found an old Team Effort sign. What hit me the
most doing that is how much trash there was on the streets and how appreciative
some of the people were that we were helping. After lunch we went and helped
out a lady named Ms. Vix for a project that was for Father’s day. Miss Vix runs
a daycare type thing during summers for little kids that want to come and they
get a choice to go, and many do in part because they get fed. The next day we
started off helping Team Effort clean a room along with ovens and refrigerators.
We also organized a closet where they keep a bunch of wires and a sound system
along with a bunch of others stuff. After we were done with that we went to a
food bank and sorted can foods into different categories. What amazed me at the
food bank was how much they had to do and how many volunteers showed up to help
organize. The third worksite we went to school. What we did at school was help
clean desks and organize some things for teachers and students. After we ate
lunch we had some free time to spend with kids first we were just playing on
the play structure, then it was playing duck, duck, goose, and finally we were
pretending to be horses carrying the kids on our backs or shoulders. After free
time went and started to finish off the day. While we were getting done
cleaning the library 3 kids were taking buckets filled with books to some bin
downstairs. We later found out they weren’t supposed to, so we ended up
reorganizing all of the books back in the library. The last worksite we did was
to help the homeless. We made 50 lunches that consisted of a hot dog, a bag of
chips, and a bottle of water. When we got to the first park it surprised me on
how many people I actually saw there. As we were talking to our first guy named
David I saw another person walk up to squirrels fighting over some bag and a
homeless man walk over to it and pick it up which I thought was bad. The one
person who stuck out in my mind was a man named Elijah aka Nature Boy. Nature
boy was an interesting character, he wore nothing but shorts that were torn all
the way up the sides of his legs and he had long white dread locked hair, and
yes he looked different but he was surprisingly a pretty cool dude, even though
his theology was way off target. After we gave our last lunch away we had the
rest of the day to ourselves so we went to two Smithsonian museums that were
“The Museum of Natural History” and “The Air and Space Museum”. We went to the
Natural History Museum first, but that didn’t peak my interest very much, but then
we went to the Air and Space Museum hit me hard. Both museums taught me many
things about the world’s past and how the airplane was developed. The last day
we had there was a full free day where we went on a tour of D.C. and saw all
the monuments. The tour taught me quite a bit of things about how and why they
were built there. After the tour we went on top of the old post office tower
and took pictures. During our last night of chapel we were given the
opportunity to let go of some of the “baggage” we had. There was a lot of
crying, but we were all there for each other. After we prayed as a group we
hammered our baggage on a wooden cross to get rid of it for good and before the
night was done we had pretty much every group there singing “Days of Elijah”
with us. I learned what it is like
working as a team in many different situations with many different people and
how it is to grow closer to God. We all found newly developed relationships and
I hope what we did in D.C. can stay with us when we get back to Oostburg. I met
many new friends and learned much more about God I am so glad I decided to go
on this trip and I can’t wait for another.
- Andrew Roerdink
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