Mission Trip

Hello,

I hope you are all doing well. I am exhausted, but in a good way. This weekend was my first mission trip, and let me tell you, it was eye opening.

I come from a small town in south-central Illinois. I live an hour away from St. Louis and whenever my family would go to the city the farthest in we would go is to the Hill with all the Italian food. My mission trip was from The Crossing Church in Macomb, IL to Gateway Christian Church St. Louis, MO. Going into it, I had no clue what I was going to be doing, all I knew was that it would be a lot of manual labor.

We left on Friday, and arrived at the Gateway 10 p.m. (give or take). We were all exhausted from the drive that was a little over three hours. However, we all stayed up past midnight bonding and playing games with one another.

The next morning we went to north St. Louis, which is considered the 'ghetto' of St. Louis. This is where the experience become real. As we pulled onto the street, all the houses seemed nice, but there were two or three right next to each other that were falling apart. One of them was missing its entire back side, and a nineteen-year-old lived in it every now and then. The building, however, was falling in upon itself. It was a nightmare to think that someone lived there.

The house next to it was known as a drug house, but the organization we were working with, Love the Lou, rented the lot behind it, and was turning it into a community garden. This is where most of us worked. We were pulling the weeds, moving, building a fence and cleaning up broken glass.

The grass was so overgrown that we had to mow it more than three times, and the mower would constantly clog up. I ended up raking up the excess grass, and that took most of the morning. Later, I push mowed a yard that was on an incline. Then, I learned how to weed eat. That was something that would be happy to only do once.

We were not only there to do all this hard work, but to also socialize with the neighbors in the community. Retrospectively, I did not really socialize. I was soaking in my surroundings. For instance, there was a tree dedicated to a young boy who had been shot and killed. There were teddy bears and kids t-shirts tied to the tree. Also, during the event there were children walking around without their parents, in a dangerous part of town. Then, one of the neighbors received a phone call that one of their friends had been shot. He, then, listed all the people he knew who had been shot. It is just so common place in St. Louis.

It was not until I got back to Gateway that night that everything began to sink in. Upon hearing everyone's stories of the day, my heart broke for all the children dealing drugs to help their families, seeing their parents under the influence or simply having to live in a house of neglect. I started crying for the injustice. This was the first time I had ever been angry with God, like why would He do this to innocent children? Why make them suffer like this?

Today (Sunday), I talked with one of the leaders of Love the Lou about setting up a house where these children may go for a refuge on nights where their parents are gone, or when they need refuge or even food and a bed. This is something I will be praying over because I cannot sit back and bury my head in the sand. These kids are suffering in a city so close to us. It should be a priority to provide safety and God's love to these kids. I hope, as time goes on, that there will be something that I can do to help the situation.

At the time, this mission trip offered a lot to reflect upon. Last night, after a full day of work, I found that I NEEDED to write about it. Please if you see a need, try and help to fill it. This world is filled with bad and evil. God's light and love needs to shine, and He is calling us to help Him.

Thank you all for reading. Please repost this on any form of social media. Get word out that hunger and neglect are part of the United States, and not just third world countries. There are things WE can do HERE, and it is time that we start.

If you are interested in Love the Lou, they are on Facebook (LOVEtheLOU), Twitter (LOVEtheLOU and Instagram (Love_the_Lou).