Great Day. God is always moving

Today was a work day for me.  I had appointments with three of partner organizations.  The ones I met with today were Food Share America, Sun Valley Youth Center and Church of the Rockies.  Food Share America is a great organization that provides groceries at half the price for families and people that can not otherwise afford food.  My main contact there, Rosalie, is a beautiful woman who showed me around the warehouse which contains large walk in freezers and stacks upon stacks of food.  Basically what my kids will be doing there is cleaning the warehouse, packing the boxes for the families and handing them out.  Food Share America strives to provide quality and affordable food across different states as well as build relationships within the communities.  Along the wall are paint marks of the hands that have come to volunteer.  I can't wait to see the hand prints of my campers on the wall and be reminded throughout the summer of the impact they are helping to make.

My second stop was at Crossroads Church of the Rockies, this is a church about two minutes from Denver Lutheran High School (the lodging facility of my camp).  There we will be helping prepare and serve lunch that is given to about 50 youth everyday.  My campers will also be helping run their VBS.

Not too far from the church is another one of our locations, in fact it is just down the block.  Sun Valley Youth Center is a nonprofit organization that is a program for children.  This project excites me the most so far because I believe it is in the most need.  The program is in our community of Sun Valley, right outside Denver.  It is unfortunately a very poor area and is home to the projects.  Almost all of the homes, except for eleven of them are owned by the government, which has led to a disrespect for the community property and and increase of the typical stereotypes of the projects.  The woman that runs the program is the only paid staff member and relies heavily on volunteers in making the program run.   I met with her the longest today and most of the "business talk" was over within 20 minutes, the rest of the hour and a half I spent talking to her about the area and her program.  She has a great vision for the children there.  She wants them to have the same experiences she did as a kid and focuses heavily on getting them to travel outside of Sun Valley.  She arranges numerous trips to museums, parks and other cities throughout Colorado on top of getting other organizations to come and include the children in their missions.  She has a wonderful heart for sharing the gospel in all that they do.  Although she seems a little hard at first, it is the type of reputation she needs to put up in that area, but she quickly softened and we laughed through much of our conversation.  I saw her interacting with some parents of the children and nothing but compassion shone through.  This woman truly cares for them beyond her job and beyond the lives of the children and into the family as a unit.  Please keep her in prayer, I do not know how she does what she does.  She mentioned that she can never completely count on a paycheck and her "vacation" as she called it, is labor day.  She is a hardworking woman with a huge heart and I am very excited to help be a part of connecting Jesus to the community of Sun Valley.

Another great step today was that for lunch, I decided that it to eat at the most "local looking" restaurant closest to our school.  My partner and I both had our red shirts on and I thought it would be smart to start making ourselves known and reach out to the community as soon as possible.  The community of Sun Valley is mostly hispanic and so the streets are lined with mexican restaurants.  We pulled into one on the corner of the street our school is on called Tacos y Salsa.  It looked a little run down, and it was, but the food was amazing.  We spoke with the woman behind the counter and laughed about how we most likely will be coming back everyday.  In talking to her a couple, Alex and Connie were eating at the table behind us and helped us order (everything was in spanish) and we got talking to them and told them why we were there.  They were so excited to hear that a christian non prof was working in the community.  It was a great feeling to be welcomed so warmly there and to take a little step to reach out.  I am antsy to continue eating there...not only because the food was completely ethnic and delicious (and really cheap too!) but because I believe it is a great building block to future connections and relationships that God is preparing for me to build.  This was not even my first full day in Sun Valley and already I have a small connection.  God is great and never stops working a plan.