My Mission Mixed 2011 is designed for Sr. and Jr. High students (entering 6th thru 12th grades) and will be at Travis Park UMC in San Antonio, TX, Friday at 6 PM until Tuesday at 12 PM. This will be a safe but "intense" week of homeless street experience, poverty simulation, and service in and around inner-city San Antonio. Students will gain an understanding of what it means to be homeless and to live in poverty. Jr. High students will have more of an introduction to inner city ministry and will be separated from Sr. High students during the day and during sleeping at night. Programming will be age-specific and well supervised.
We focus on service, not the hammer and nails kind of service, but the relational service - much the way Christ focused when He walked the earth. We reach as many homeless as possible, handing out 1000s of water bottles, 150 sandwiches each day, and sharing the love of Christ in simple conversations. We offer those that we meet on the streets our time, our non-judgement and our sincere friendship. Too often, we have to drag our students off the streets and back into the church where we sleep at night. This is a good thing.
We try to spend the week doing with less then our normal daily, all too comfort lives allow us too - often giving up some of our possessions, going without showers, and even "roof sleeping" (a fenced flat top roof atop the church, in which we stay, where we sleep for a night). We roof sleep so we understand that sleep on the streets is not easy - we are able to smell and hear all the sounds that downtown San Antonio has to offer. And it impacts our lives. The next morning we are more kind and more gentle to all those that we meet.
We want the homeless to experience the true grace and love that Christ holds for them, and we try our hardest to share just a piece of that. We often leave MYMission, feeling inadequate and asking if we could have done more. We always leave with knowing that we will forever be changed by the people that we have met and we know that we will never be able to go under a downtown bridge without looking for a familiar face (one that we've met during our days on the streets).
If you would like to help, we will be putting together 100s of homeless bags to hand out. To get more information on how you and your church can help, simply click here: http://www.reachingyouth.org/f/My_Mission_Hand_Out_Bags_Poster.pdf
I have been saying it a lot lately, and I'll say it one more time, I am blessed to be able to chase God's heart, and share Him with students all while calling it a job and getting paid to boot.
W
