After being in the car for almost 20 hours, getting some fresh air was nice. Today was our first day going on routes. We first made lunches with the men and then left to hand them out around 11. We stopped at a few places in the bluff, tent city and a new location in the trailer park. It was crazy to see the joy and hope that the people had despite their situation. They smiled seeing our lunch and were grateful for the prayers. Most of them even asked how they could pray for us too. In Seven Bridges, prayer is a huge foundation in their ministry. They prayed not only just before meals, but in every spot we visited and over every person that we met. Even if a person did not want to pray with us, we were told to pray for them as we walked away. We had opportunities to see a lot of kids that experience difficult situations, yet they were so happy to be able to play and talk. It was eye opening to see how grateful they were for the little things they had. One kid even said “Thank you Lord for the roof over our head”.
Today we were super blessed when we were able to see and pray with people we handed out lunches to. God opened our eyes to see how blessed and highly favored we are and how we should be grateful for everything we have. One person in specific we were thankful for was a woman named Tiana, who we helped pick out little girl children’s books for. She was very interested in 7 Bridges and asked us to pray for her to have strength to beat her addiction. She already seemed to have so much strength then and it touched us when she prayed for us as well. We are so blessed to be on this trip and we know God purposely has a plan to do a work in us as we spend time down here this week.
After the routes, we came back and organized all the donations. We then went out to have a “portable” soup kitchen to two different places to serve anyone who needed supper. Not many people came, but it was still a unique opportunity to bring warm meals & socks, hats and gloves to those who did come. After, we came back to have Collard Greens, Black Eyed Peas, Corn Bread and Rice with Sausage. It was a typical Southern Meal! A few kids joined us for some heated games of Catchphrase and Bananagrams. For devotions, we talked about how we can show love through being actively patient. For example, trusting God’s perfect timing, and not focusing on one’s self but serving God. It was a great day and we are looking forward to the exciting experiences God has in store for us for the rest of the week.
~ Jocelyn Gartman and Elliana Gonzalez
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| Gettin' ready for the day! |
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| Orientation on lunch making... |
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| Bagging lunches |
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| Cleaning up |
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| Our first house. 18 kids live here! |
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| Next stop... |
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| Walking through a trailer park. This is a relatively new stop for 7 Bridges. |
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| Tent city under one of the highways |
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| Praying for those that live here before we leave |
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| Debriefing at a park before heading back |
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| Pretty sure Rob tried on a third of the clothes that were donated |
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| Trying on matching hats as we sorted through all the donations |
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| Lots of socks! |
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| Thank you for all the donations!! We are so excited to be able to hand many of them out while on our routes! (There's actually quite a bit more than pictured here:) |
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| We had the opportunity to go on an evening route. We served soup and handed out socks, blankets and hats. |
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| Serving soup at the "Bridge to Nowhere" |
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| A little game time before heading up for our group devos. What a great 1st day!! |
Amazing, God is with this mission
ReplyDeleteThat is a true mission! What a blessing you all are to those people ❤️
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