Cheer Camp and Homeless Outreach (2 in 1)

Some of my volunteer hours came from something I did with the Cheer team. We had a cheer camp for K-8th graders, that go to our schools. We then split all the attendees in half. I was with the peewees. This consisted of girls from the ages 4-10. We had decided to teach them a lot of things that day. We started with jumps. Went on to 2 cheers. Showed them small stunts. Then ended with a dance. Throughout the entire time, it was really fun to see how the girls grew, and got better as we went along. I got to spend time with some of the purest souls, while I was giving up a Friday afternoon. But I loved it. It was rewarding in the sense of giving to some little girl, and knowing she probably wont say "Thank you", but she are thankful. I'm so glad I volunteered to do it with them, and look forward to doing it again.

Some other volunteer hours came from doing homeless outreach. My church does something called H.O.P.E., and every Saturday we go down to a building along 7th street, prepare tons of food, and homeless people come and eat. But what my church does a bit differently, is once we are done serving them, we all grab a plate of food too, and go and sit and eat with them. We are encouraged to talk to them. Ask about their story, how they are doing, and interact with them like they are normal people, coming over to your house for dinner. My church has realized that often time, the way we treat homeless people doesn't look all that great. We may be treating them well, but if we aren't engaging them and treating them like any other person, then we are not doing our job right, in helping them. Doing H.O.P.E., I meet all kinds of people that talk about all kinds of things, and act in so many different ways. Some people blatantly ignore you, some are rude, others are completely grateful, some are not and complain about the food provided, some tell you crazy stories about their lives, others tell you what a blessing you are to them. The list really goes on. But the point is to never act like we are feeding the homeless. Its to act as if we are feeding are fellow neighbors. Which is actually in the Bible. There is a parable about a man holding a banquet, and all of his guests who said the were coming, gave phony excuses not to come, so he told his servant to gather all the people in the streets, the "lower-class" people, and proclaimed that his old guests would not taste his banquet, because there were those who would truly appreciate it, and he could interact with at a human level, rather than a class level. I like to make the correlation between the two, because so often we do forget to treat others as humans, as opposed to their social standing or class.

So, I guess that wasn't a reflection on one single event, but every time I've done H.O.P.E., all put together, being reflected on, and analyzed.