One step for little me one great leap towards God - Alyssa

This was my first mission trip and the farthest I have ever been from home without my parents. I was terrified because I was going without my best friend and she is the only one that I really know in the group. I’m the first in my family to go on a mission trip so that made that more scary because I didn’t know what to expect out of this. Yes I did hear the stories of other people’s trips but they had never taken a trip to Saint Paul, Minnesota and they were not my own experience. I’m not a people person. I guess you can say I get that from my dad.  I don’t really talk to people at all, so of course I get stuck with a jobs where I had to talk to real people not that people aren’t invisible.

The first day of working at Open Hands, which is a place where homeless or low-income get their clothes and food from.  Zack, Sara, and I were pushing a big load of chairs to set the place up  for the day, and Zack kept pushing  the cart so I got pushed into a trash can to avoid being squashed into a wall. Sara said it look like I was sitting on a toilet. My job for when the place opened-- I would put all of the empty hangers on a rack. Sounds easy enough, so I’m all ready to have the easiest job on the planet. The place opens and all you can see is a big crowd of people running for stuff. Not even 5 minutes into the job, I have a stack of hangers in my arms that is a mile high and just as wide. Then Levi comes to help me as we are putting away the hangers, Levi start to organize them to which was different to me because I just throw thing on there and call it good.  When the hangers were no longer a problem, Levi left to do his own job every so often I would get hangers and I would act like they were my favorite thing in the world. Open Hands got very slow for one of the day and every one in my group was in the shade except for me the one that burns to the color of a tomato. The amount of time I was in the shade was about 2 minutes. Thank goodness for sunscreen. In my group was Anna, Max, Zack, Sara, and 4 other people from Aberdeen South Dakota. Their names where Brayden, Nick, Hunter, and their pastor Liz.

The second day was at a Cerenity Care center (an old folk’s home). Half of us had to organize movies the other half had to pick up sticks and clean tables. Then we had to talk to the residents and see if they wanted to go outside. And that was a really scary thing because those people scare me. And this place was a Catholic place. So there is no common ground there. The first person Sara made me go and try to talk to was scary. The famous last words from Sara was “look that lady is sitting all alone how about you go talk to her, I will go with you.” Big mistake we stated to talk to her and she said “I’m eating go away!” So I practically ran away terrified for my life. Than Zack had gotten four men to go outside so I had to push one of them and as soon as I got outside I didn’t even talk to the guy then Anna came over and started talking to him at most I said at least 10 words to him. Then it was time for mass so I didn’t have to try to talk to him anymore. There was this amazing funny women I love her name was Helen. She reminded me of my family from the way she spoke.

For the other two days it was basically the same thing one day at Open Hands and the other at Cerenity Care center. I loved this trip. Of course there was more but I don’t want anyone to go to sleep with the words in black one a white sheet of paper. Days come and days go, hours are brief, memories are for a life time. There are good days and bad days but there are always a memory left for you to look back on.