Today our team served all day at Open Door Mission, a gospel rescue mission that provides emergency shelter as well as longer term housing to the homeless, feed 3000 people a day and is also an assistance center including a food pantry and place where people can obtain clothing, household items and other help. The staff and volunteers are amazing and devoted to their work. The facility is extremely impressive and our group tackled a number of projects today. We served by sorting and distributing food including meat, milk, bakery items as well as diapers, house fans and other items that are in need right now. It takes an incredible amount of work to keep the shelves and racks of clothing, shoes, toys and other items they are distributing stocked so we spent a lot of time sorting donations in between waves of customers seeking items. Both our youth and adults have the opportunity to help people who were seeking specific items and a number of them were in need of children’s shoes and children’s clothing. We also had the opportunity to eat in the cafeteria where the meals are provided. They truly provide restaurant-quality meals to all. We ate or worked today with a number of clients and residents who stories were incredibly moving. Our team is keeping them in our prayers as they go on their journey from addiction and/or homelessness to a better life.

day 3

After volunteering there all day, we ate at a local soul food restaurant called Big Mama’s. It was a terrific experience but more than that Big Mama herself came out and spent time with our group sharing her story and how she is using this business to try to help those who needs job skills in the community. She specifically tries to hire those who have served prison time because it is so difficult for them to find employment.

We saw God’s hand at work in her restaurant as well as through so many of the people we met with and worked with and we’re privileged to serve today. One of the young youth on our team shared tonight how her perspective on homelessness changed through her experience serving today… It was truly a blessing to see how that agency is at work in this community and using gospel based principles to change lives.

Tomorrow we will worship and end our stay here in Omaha.