Senior-High Washington D.C. Service Retreat

When you think of the stereotypical homeless person portrayed by pop culture what do you think of?  Do you think of someone wearing multiple layers of clothing?  Someone pushing a shopping cart?  There are lots of images that come to mind, but as our group discovered this past weekend, many of these images are merely stereotypes and do not represent reality.

On Saturday we made around 30 bagged lunches to hand out to the homeless population around the area that we were staying.  We split into three groups, and went out to engage the homeless population and to offer a bagged lunch.  After close to two hours we came back together as a large group, and everyone agreed, finding homeless people is easier said than done.  We were expecting to fine individuals who fit the stereotypes that we had in our minds, the problem was there are not many people who fit these stereotypes.  We were able to hand out 8 meals.  While we were certainly disappointed we didn't get to hand out more meals, this lead to some good conversation about the homeless population. 

My group meet a gentleman by the name of William.  At first our group was hesitant to approach William, because we could not determine if he was homeless.  Not wanting to offend anyone we approached William initially asking for help.  We described who we were, and what we were doing.  We asked William if he knew of anyone who could use a meal.  William told us that he could use a meal, and that he would eat it right away.  After a wonderful conversation with William we headed back to rejoin the rest of the group.  We all agreed, even if we had no more success the rest of the day, we felt like we had accomplished something big by helping William.

After working in the morning we spent the afternoon doing a little sight-seeing around the city.  We ran into a homeless man asking for money near a metro station, and Kacie-Linn dec

ided that the group would take him to McDonalds so he could have a meal.  So we all crowded into McDonalds and Kacie-Linn treated our new friend to a meal. 

The following morning we worked with an organization called Café Capitol Hill.  They are a part of the Capitol Hill United Methodist Church.  This group offers a meal every Sunday following church.  We worked to help prepare the meal and set up the room, and then joined the congregation in worship.  After worship we went down to the fellowship hall to serve the meal to the approximately fifty homeless men and women who were gathered to eat.  We all had plenty of opportunity to not only serve the men and women, but to also fellowship with them.  We all h

ad an enjoyable time, and even made a few new friends.

During the course of the weekend we were able to serve others, and by doing so, serve Jesus.  It was a wonderful weekend and a positive experience for all involved.