At last the day has come! We have arrived in Omaha and were greeted with open arms by the amazing staff here at Trinity United Methodist Church.  Becky, who is in charge of their Children’s programming gave us a brief tour and showed us to our area of the church.  I am amazed at their spacious church and all the artistic touches.  They have an in-house artist that has jazzed up their brand new youth addition to the building with some awesome graffiti.  I praise Becky as she is in the midst of their VBS this week and having to share space with us.  She was even gracious enough to allow our kids to attend VBS tonight.  We have 7 kids on our mission trip with us, 5 of them are staying at the church and they are between 6 and 10 years old.

After getting unloaded and settled in we met our mission leader Matt from The Big Garden. He is a very nice guy that has accomplished a lot here in Omaha over the last decade.  He spent the afternoon with us sharing about himself, The Big Garden, and what we will plan to do this weekend.  We had great discussions about poverty and finished up watching a documentary called “The Line.” I highly recommend watching this if you desire to understand poverty more.  I was humbled and even a little scared at times because I could see myself being in that position so easily.  Some of the movie seemed to be over the heads of our kiddos, but I was amazed at some of their take always from the day.

At the end of the night, we had discussion while enjoying ice cream sandwiches.  Here are some of the things our kids mentioned that they learned today:

  1.  You can be arrested and taken to jail for sleeping on the street.
  2.  Young people can make a big difference.
  3.  You can choose to help yourself or you can choose to help others.
  4.  Mission work is addressing the problem, justice work is looking to solve the problem.

We are all eager to get our hands dirty tomorrow!! We will keep you updated!