FCC Paducah - Mission Outreach: A much better day!

Hello everyone!

This is Ben again, since Erin and Hannah are still in the shower.

Today we met in the commons room at the church at around 7 a.m. We had to make our lunches, which consisted of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, applesauce, a fruit punch Capri Sun and granola bar choice. We will be enjoying this meal every day while we’re here, by the way. We also helped make lunches for another group who didn’t get to the church until around 8 a.m. This group is from the First Church of Lombard, Illinois. They are a UCC church and brought about 60 kids with them, and that’s not even all of their youth group. If all their youth group members have really strong personalities like the members of our group, their sponsors are in for a challenge! There is not enough room for them to stay here with us, so they are staying at a nearby youth hostel. We are enjoying having the whole gym to ourselves.

So this morning after making lunch we had breakfast here at the church—bagels and cream cheese from Au Bon Pain, which is a little bakery right next door to the church. After breakfast we had an orientation meeting with the other groups, where we were told exactly what we would be doing today.

Everyone here this week has been divided into smaller groups, and our group has been divided into two separate groups. The red group is Ben, Kay, Allison, Madison, Jessica, Hannah and Chris, and the blue group is Erin, Vicki, Samantha, Cara, Megan and Kristy. Each day we will be going to separate destinations, but today, both our groups went together to the Capital Area Food Bank.

The Capital Area Food Bank is the largest, public nonprofit hunger and nutrition education resource in Washington DC metropolitan area. Each year the CAFB distributes 20 million pounds of food, including six million pounds of fresh produce through over 700 member agencies. They sponsor classes for lower income people to teach them how to make nutritious meals and snacks on a budget. They also have a Kids’ Café, in which they teach kids to make their own food.

We took the Metro to the food bank, where we were assigned two different jobs. One group packed more than 400 bags of food for students who probably do not have much to eat on the weekends. The bags consisted of cans of luncheon meat and chicken breast, a box of macaroni and cheese, sunflower seeds and a juice box. The other group stuffed, stamped and sealed more than 700 envelopes that were sent to the food bank’s member agencies. As a side note, Hannah and Cara were called down for being too loud while stuffing envelopes in one of the offices at the food bank.

One of the main areas of DC that the food bank services, called ward 8, has only two supermarkets for more than 100,000 people. By contrast, most other areas have a major supermarket for every 15,000 people. So, if a person living in ward 8 does not have a car, or money for transportation, or is disabled, they have a very difficult time obtaining healthy food. One of the purposes of the food bank is to fill this gap by distributing food to people in this area.

After leaving the food bank, we went to the CVS near the church to buy some breakfast foods, soft drinks and other miscellaneous supplies. When we returned to the church, we had a snack (Club crackers, whipped cream cheese spread and water) and reflection time about everyone’s experiences for the day.

After the reflection, we were headed to the National Museum of Natural History. On the way out of the church, however, we struck up a conversation with Francine, who works for a newspaper called “Street Sense” written for homeless people to sell. She began telling us all about the paper and invited us to come visit the paper’s office (which is in the same church where we’re staying) where we met other people who work for the paper. We heard some interesting stories and ended up buying 13 copies of their paper and five copies of their book “Street Verses” which contains poems written by homeless people. Francine was excited that her recipe for scalloped potatoes, along with her picture, was in the current edition of the paper.

After visiting with Francine and company, we headed to the museum where we saw an Imax movie about lions in 3-D. We learned that elephants do not enjoy lions whatsoever, and tend to take charge of the situation whenever they’re around. The female lions do all the hunting, but as soon as they’ve killed a gazelle, the male lion comes and takes it away to eat. The females then have to go kill another gazelle. You’d think those gazelles would get a clue after seeing so many of their loved ones being attacked and eaten. I guess they just think, “That won’t happen to me.”

After the touring the museum, we headed to Chinatown, where we ate at everyone’s favorite Chinatown destination—Ruby Tuesday, where some of us got excellent service and others (namely Chris) got really poor service. While eating, Hannah was convinced that she knew a man sitting at an adjacent table, but did not want to confront him about it. Cara decided to ask him his name when she ran into him at the salad bar and she told Hannah that his name was Dan. The name didn’t ring a bell, but as he was leaving, Hannah told him she was sure he knew him. She asked him where he was from, and he’s from Fort Worth, Texas, and she met him just a couple of weeks ago at Frog Camp at TCU. It’s a small world after all!

Right outside Ruby Tuesday, a homeless man asked for bus fare. Chris and Kay gave him some money, and we learned that he was from Lexington, Kentucky. He was familiar with YSOP and he was trying to get to a shelter before curfew. He had just gotten a job today pouring cement, so hopefully he will be back on his feet soon. It was really interesting talking to him and finding out his point of view on different issues. We also had the chance to buy dinner for another homeless person.

After Hannah’s sighting of the man she knew from Texas, Jessica thought she saw a WNBA player for Mystics at the Subway station. When she was too scared to ask her about it, our brave little Cara confronted the woman, only to find out that Jessica was mistaken. This led to a string of mistaken celebrity sightings at the subway station, including Danny DeVito and Reba McEntire.

We headed back to the church after that for showers and bed. It takes a long time to take a shower here because there are only two for males and two for females, and they have the water pressure of slow-leaking faucet. The temperature of the water changes from freezing cold to boiling hot with each drop. Another interesting note about the showers is that we share them with homeless people, although not simultaneously. They use the showers while we’re doing work during the day.

Let’s see…what else did we learn today? We learned to stand on the right-hand side of the escalator in order to avoid death looks from commuters.

Tomorrow, we are all getting up at 5 a.m. to jog around the block a few times before breakfast. (Just making sure you’re still reading!)

We are having a really good time here in DC, and hopefully we are making our congregation and city proud.