Brenna Mason carries Teagan Frame while Abby Mason and Kayla Dellamaggiore look on

Our youth and several leaders are living out a "Spring Break Experiment" on Thursday and Friday of Holy Week. They are experiencing a little of the world that the homeless population of Fresno lives in all the time.  They started their adventure with a tour of Fresno Rescue Mission on Thursday morning.  Then, they served the sandwiches and stew they had prepared to the homeless people at Santa Clara and F Streets in downtown Fresno.  The young people were so generous, they gave their own lunch away.  Youth ministers Aaron Scott and Doug Baker concocted a quick "Plan B" and took the group to Taco Bell, where the orders were "3 items from the dollar menu and only water to drink!"  The students spent the afternoon experiencing one-on-one time with patients at various long-term health-care facilities in the city and ended the afternoon with a door-step baby shower for a young woman who is a patient at the Crisis Pregnancy Center.  They came back to the church to spend the night in the discomfort of sleeping on the concrete with no padding.   A little ice thrown on the girls' sleeping bags from the boys added to the discomfort, as ice turns into water (ask Kelly Gresham about this).  The girls were resourceful, using towels from the baptismal to soak up what they could of the melting ice.  Youth minister Aaron Scott found it interesting that, although each student was given their own cardboard box, both the boys and the girls decided to pool their resources and create cardboard dormitories rather than single-person bedrooms with the boxes.  The young people are off for some more adventures within our city today, interacting with people they would not normally talk to, taking forms of transportation they may not be accustomed to, eating with people who are not like themselves.... God's richest blessings to all who participate in this experiment!
"For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in...Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me." Matthew 25:35,40 (New American Standard Version)
--Posted by Mama O.