Band of Survivors Team Update 7

The day started off with people rushing through the halls, making sure they were ready to start the day. Meanwhile, I was opening my eyes and listening to Andy’s commands to get ready. After quickly showering and making myself presentable, I joined the rest of the team. We finally arrived at the Evangeline Booth Lodge and awaited our instructions. After being escorted to a waiting room and discussing with Mark Zinke, an employee at the Lodge, we got ready to volunteer work for the homeless shelter.

The work started out fairly simple, wiping down tables and baby seats were our main concern. Then, we began serving food saying greetings and working in the kitchen. During our time in lunch, Jim, the head cook at the shelter, would give us small errands. After serving the clients at the shelter, we ate lunch. A truck, full of heavy donations waited on us. After lunch, a group of strong men (and women) came in the basement to lift boxes. The boxes of pineapple tid-bits and tomato paste were extremely heavy. After finally unloading the boxes some of us were probably worn out but we were still ready to do more. We split up into a couple of groups where we did different jobs. While some of us were raking garbage and sticks off the lawn, others were taking pits out of cherries. We finally finished and we sat down with Jim and talked about homelessness and his eighteen faithful years at the Lodge. He gave us a bag a snacks and we all said “goodbye” and “see you tomorrow” since we were coming back the next day.

After coming back from the shelter some of the guys went to the gym to go play soccer and basketball while others stayed back and ate popcorn (out of starvation). Dinner was made and we had chicken soup and salad. After dinner we had about half an hour or so before peer groups. My peer group and I went to Cozy’s where they had good Thai food. We stayed there to read that day’s lesson in RevoDevos and the day portion of the Bible. After finishing and returning to CFOT we closed in prayer. We got some cake and the lounge was decorated with streamers for Dietrich’s birthday. We all sang for him and we told him that around the flagpole he must go (he must go, he must go). After running sixteen times around the flagpole we ate our cake.

After celebrating, we rounded up to go to go to the lake. We walked to the lake and we talked with each other and took pictures. Eric called us all together and we sat down to listen. He gave us the story why July 5th was an important anniversary and how the Holy Spirit had been such a key player to do so much. We closed in prayer (while fireworks were being blown to the right and left of us). We went back home and had some free time and around two hours later we were told it was time for bed.

Sam Arias