Group Photo from Three Square Food Bank in Las Vegas

Here is the group photo Patti Johnson, Volunteer Coordinator from Three Square Food Bank in Las Vegas sent to us.

SLY LAS VEGAS TEAM MEMBER PHOTOS

THE LAS VEGAS TEAM AT PDX

HAILEY

CARA

BRYAN

BRANDON

McKENNA

LAUREL

MEGAN

SAM

SCOTT

SIMONE

CHAD

LIZZIE

JUDY

PASTOR DAVID

SKYE

SASHA

CHRIS

JON

STEPHANIE

DICK

DEBBI

SHANE

ERIK

GOD'S WORK + OUR HANDS = CHANGED LIVES!

Heading home. . .:]

Hey again! :]]
This trip is now coming to an end and everyone is very excited to bring what they learned home with them to Portland.
Yesterday was a longgg, but fun day.
First we went to do landscaping at St. Jude's. Mckenna and I were really getting sun and we wanted to stay out of it. The lady there told us that we could clean out their shed because of its HUMONGOUS mess. We started simple and tried to make things more organized. But then, as the lady came back to look at what we had accomplished she said, "This is amazing. Honestly, it is sooo much easier to get things done with everything sorted out. This will make things go MUCH quicker.
After we had finished, she came and found us while we were eating pizza and told us how amazed she was by the difference. I cannot believe how much of a difference we made just by cleaning a shed. :] What a change.
At St. Jude's, after landscaping, we got a chance to become close and personal with some of the children and teens staying there. I had the chance to experience the difference in our cultures and the way that we live. I met two young girls, 17 year old, that had just had children. When i asked one of them what they named their child they told me. Then i asked why they named it that, she said, "That's what his father wanted him to be named." I'm not sure if the father was still around, but by the way that she said that, it kinda just touched me. You can see the movies and tv shows the impact of teenage pregnancy, but you barely get the chance to talk to someone that has experienced it.
We also played with the kids. Elizabeth, I'm not sure if she has mentioned, but she met a young girl, 4 years old, named E*****. While Lizzie was playing with her, she noticed some bruises on her arm. Lizzie and i asked her what was wrong and how she got it. . .her answer: My mommy. When we were doing devotions, Lizzie told the group of this story and our whole group was hit pretty hard. Complete Silence. Tears came and it was hard to believe. I could not understand why someone would do that to suchhh a gift like E*****.
Later we went to a soup kitchen and fed the homeless.
My job was to go around with salt, pepper, and hot sauce and offer it to people to put on the meals. After a while of going around, I realized that people started getting seconds. And even more and more. It was interesting to watch people fight for more grapes on their plate, and complaining about no butter for their potato. People began to talk to me when we went around and when i told them we were from Oregon, almost everyone of them told us that they used to work there or lived there in the past. I was blown away by the things that we could talk about and the conversations we had.

Our group has gotten closer than ever before. I feel like i can tell this group anything, and that theyre going to be there for me no matter what. I cannot wait to get back home and share with our congregation the experiences that have touched my life. I have been blessed to be a part of SLY and getting the chance to meet some amazing people. I wish that everyone joined us in the journey to understanding our faith and carrying out God's word.

~Megan :]

We make it rain

How about that ride in... i guess that's why they call it sin city. In this Arid desert we have shared stories and experiences with people from all over. In the Resue mission i heard people telling their stories from all over the states, I never would have guessed that people from all over would end up in a place like this. I always thought that homeless people in an area just came from the surrounding areas that to me was incredible. I had the chance to talk to a man named brian, i asked him if he was a volunteer or he was being paid to work in the mission, He replied "I'm a resident" at first i looked at him with a blank stare and he then told me that it meant he was recovering from being homeless and was helping out the people who were now in the same situation he was.

If you want to know why we have not blogged more…

Let me give you a sample of our day on Friday. 8:00am: Once again, we met for a group breakfast at the buffet (note to parents – you may have to cook differently when we get back home as it will be important at each meal to have about 30 selections of what to eat).

8:30am: Load up the vans and head out to St. Jude’s Children’s Ranch in Boulder City, NV where we moved rocks, pulled weeds, removed invasive plants, repaired some irrigation lines and addressed several other landscaping needs.

Since it was HOT (about 107 on the sign I saw on the way back), they let us take our shoes off and jump in the swimming pool during one of our breaks!!

After three & half hours of this, all of us were beat and beet red.

12:30pm: SLY sponsored a Pizza & Root Beer Float lunch for the residents. This is a rare event for them since most of the 40 residents (ages 6 to 18 and one infant) are wards of the state and this kind of expenditure does not fit into the meal budget requirements allowed by the state guidelines. 1:00pm: SLY planned interactive games to play and had a game time with the residents. It was a great time of fun, chasing each other around playing Blob Tag, musical chairs, finger nail painting, and dancing. We got to interact with a bunch of the kids and some of their house parents and the staff. We also gave them the quilt with the quilt squares our VBS kids made and they were delighted!

2:30pm: We set up a row of tables there at St. Jude’s and broke out the boxes of food we purchased at Walmart the night before (actually it was earlier that morning because we were in line checking out when the clock turned from midnight to 12:01 and the checker stopped right before our order to put in the money tray for the next day! – just another of the really interesting & different experiences we have had). Oh, back to the story. So we set up our prep line and made 300 sack lunches of PB&J sandwiches, a snack bar, banana, bottle of water and a pair of socks, packed them in boxes and loaded them into our vans.

3:45pm: We grabbed something to drink our of our cooler (again) and loaded ourselves back into the vans and zipped off to the Las Vegas City Rescue Mission. We got there about 4:20, washed up, put on aprons and hair nets (parents – I wish you could have been there to see your kids wearing hair nets!! I am laughing even now as I write this).

Each of us were assigned a meal task and at 5:00pm some of the most destitute of society streamed through the doors to get the only hot meal they were going to eat on this day. As they came out of the dining hall, we handed out the sack lunches we had made so they would have at least one more meal later that night or the next day. The most desired item – the socks! I cannot tell you how many times we heard “Thank You” and “Bless You” for the socks. One gentleman exclaimed, “Socks! Today is Christmas. Bless you, bless you.”

6:30pm: We were all too hot and tired to eat and the vote was an hour of pool time THEN eat our own dinner. 8:05pm We met at our traditional spot – the elevator lobby on the first floor and headed across the street to Red Robin for a fun and enjoyable dinner.

9:30pm Back to our hotel and to Scott & Judy’s living room area for D&D (stands for Devotions & Debriefing) led by Lizzie and Brandon. This has been one of the most meaningful times each day where we get to share with each other the things we have experienced, observed, learned, what impacted us, what has changed for us, and what we will be taking back to Portland. 10:30pm Judy, Debbi, Scott, Dick and Pastor David are very, very tired and ready for bed. The kids – well I think a bunch of them went bowling here in the hotel!

what is my faith?

hey. its laurel. we painted so much today!! and i met one of the coolest people in the world. today, i met a teenager from the FLDS who had recently left his community. He told us literally EVERYTHING about his family and how close they are. i dont think i have ever learned more about one person in my life time. i've learned his life's story in a matter of hours and i loved it. I think i have only ever heard of FLDS, and it hasn't always been shed in the best light, but today, i learned so much about his culture that i never knew. He told me about how family is always first, and how happiness is eternal. i learned that sometimes the reason we get upset with our parents is because they are the ones who have to say no. I realized how much courage one could ever have, because he left his home, everything he has ever grown up with, all he ever has known, and he decided he doesnt have the same faith, and chose to do what he wanted. he didnt let others choose his life for him. and i admire that. i wish some day i can have the same amount of confidence and courage as someone like he has. i love learning about others lives and faiths, and today my eyes were opened beyond my imagination. i didnt know someone could have this much insight. and i love every moment he spent explaining to us what he did for fun, or what he believed. i look forward to tomorrow, so i may learn even more of those we marginalize, and those who walk right before us full of stories yearning to be heard. i am so blessed.
Laurel Skinner

Angel card devotion

Tonight we are using our handy dandy Angel cards. Each one holds a word that can describe us. Were gonna talk about how these word affect us, our relationships, how people see us, or how they change our relationship with God.
We learned a lot about about people and how they affect us. We drew words like Openess, Joy, Brotherhood, Faith, Creativity, Spontaneity, creativity, Trust, peace, and light. Brian made an amazing point with his word, openness, he said that openness can hurt us. By being open about our faith we are stereotyped. It makes life harder then needed. Today Debbi's group was really joyful (we believe we left the door closed a bit to much). Our joyfulness spread throughout the group and helped everyone getting through the day.
The people we met have tremendous Faith. They don's necessarily know what tomorrow will bring. But their faith helps them get through it. These people also have amazing creativity. Their creativity isn't something you would see just by looking at them. it something you find by complete accident. When you talk to these people, you find out who they are and how AMAZINGLY talented they are.
We also discovered something new today. SLY as a group, is very much like a family. We feel super close and are all friends. We noticed that the people at the transitional home, they were just like us. These people created their own support system because they didn't have one.
I feel super blessed that I got to meet these people and that i get to work with them.

P.S Laurel learned everything she knows about Mormons from SOUTH PARK

MY FEET HURT >> AND OTHER THINGS THAT DON’T REALLY MATTER!

It’s 9pm on Wednesday evening and my feet hurt! But that’s OK. It doesn’t really matter because I so enjoyed watching our kids work so dang hard painting 16 of the 27 Transitional Housing Rooms today >> and I really enjoyed having a BBQ with about 40 of the residents who are living there while they are getting their life together >> and I was really touched by the conversations in the van on the way home and the discussions I had earlier in the day with my team. Lives are being changed this week. So my hurting feet don’t really matter. And besides, my feet are not nearly as dirty as Stephanie’s and Megan’s feet!!
















<-- Stephanie's Foot! The right one, I think.













It didn’t really matter because Dick called me at 6:50 AM said he was ready to go to Home Depot and pick up a $1000 worth of paint, where was I? I was so tired from getting home the night before at 12:30 AM I probably would have slept right through to breakfast AND THEN I would have started getting multiple and many text messages from these teenagers about paying for their coveted breakfast buffet and their even more highly desired Starbucks java jolt! But all that really didn’t matter because our teens were sooo appreciative to have been able to go out and have some fun last night after working all day in the Three Square Food Warehouse.





Bye for now as it is time for devotions.

Scott

It is sooo great to have a group like SLY...

Going into this trip, I was excited to learn new things, get a new look on life, and hopefully become more inspired than EVER before.

Even though we are in a new place that is unfamiliar to our regular lifestyles, we have adapted to the changes in weather, people, hospitality, and in general the way that people live here. It is verrrry different from what you would see in Portland, Oregon. For example, I was completely blown away by how many casinos there were in just one city!!! We’ve seen some crazy stuff.

A lot has been funnn, but we have done farrr more work than I ever thought we could have done. Yesterday, working at Three Square was a real different way to look at things. We worked from 9:00 am-12 pm and then again from 1 pm-4 pm. Although it seems like a lot of time, knowing what we were doing and experiencing the cooperation and commitment to helping others really made it go by fast.

Throughout this trip, I think I have become wayyy closer with everyone in the group. I have learned things about different people that I never knew before. For instance, I don’t think I had ever had a conversation with Stephanie before. But yesterday, when I was having a realllly hard time, she was there, and she told me that everything was going to be okay. Also, I have discovered so much through our devotions. I think that Bryan is the one that has realllly inspired me so far. He works hard to make his way and be himself, and when he gets put down, he gets right back up. When we were talking about stereotypes yesterday, many different questions came up: What do you think of stereotypes? Good or Bad? What stereotypes do you give your friends…adults? The question that hit me the hardest was: What stereotypes are you under, and how do you deal with them?

My answer was difficult. But as I thought about it, I decided that you can change the way people look at you. You can be whatever you want to be. I opened up yesterday about this…and there were some times where I couldn’t explain how I felt; but I realized that it is sooo great to have a group like SLY to come to and have no judgment. I’m just happy to have a group that is so open and accepting of EVERY possible stereotype that wants to join our group. No judgment. Just looking at them as they are, and seeing past anything that has been a barrier in their life.

This trip has been an eye opener for all of us, and I am veerry happy that I am accepted into a family like this.

~Megan P :]]

Chad's Thought

LasVegas is awesome.

Chad

Hailey's Wednesday Lunch Time Reflections

Today we are all getting covered in paint. Yes, were painting transitional housing for teenagers. We met a guy named Orin. He used to be a Mormon. Every time I walk out of a finished room for a snack I hear people asking him about it, and him replying in his AMAZING southern accent.

It’s lunch and we have already painted SIX rooms. The painting takes about an hour, but then that khaki green. Some rooms are almost the same color, and some are rose colored, but they are all in need of a paint job.

Walking around we all look like a dirty, mangy, low blood sugared, paint covered group of teens with five adults. I have counted at least 6 weird, Ohmygoshwhatiswrongwiththosekidsibetterrunaway, looks.

Its only day three and were all making stronger friendships. At daily devotion last night we had a discussion about stereotypes. We talked about how they affect us in life, school, and in our relationships with each other. People really opened up about how they really love this group. For some of us, school life is really hard. At school we have been labeled something were not, Loner, nerd, weirdo, ect. It donned on me then that SLY is such a benefit in our lives. It’s a place where were not labeled, and can be whoever we are. We are accepted no matter what. A few tears sprang up and all there quickly comforted them. Hugs formed stronger bonds. We are all gaining new insight into the world through each other and the people we meet. We are rapidly changing and growing. (were also getting amazing tans J) Hailey

Here is a few photos of our day to go along with Hailey's post:

The Team (at PDX - 5am!!)
















At Lutheran Social Services of Nevada where we learned about the integration of services across many agencies.













After 4 hours straight of data entry for coordination of services to the homeless, some of the group decided that going to college was a much better option than this type of work.















It may not look physically tough, but it was mentally demanding and tedious.






















In the end, we accomplished our goal of inputting all 371 individuals in need of services!

My birthday, and helping people.

Today was a great day for me. I think I work up earlier than I ever had before. 3am rolled around and outta bed I rolled still not fully awake. I finished packing and slowly walked out of the house. My dad drove me to the airport and said good bye with all the sadness a dad could, "Bye Hailey, I love you, Happy Birthday." As he walked away it started to sink in how much of a journey I was embarking on. No parents, just amazing leaders leading me on a journey that will change who I am forever. My brain still hasn't fully grasped the situation. I realized that by helping the worlds most needy people I will find parts of me I never knew existed. Every person here is going to grow, and change into even more amazing people. I love each and every one of them.
Today we got to tour a smallish food delivering center. I got to see the hope in these peoples eyes. They knew that even through this heat, they were going to live a little bit longer. After that we spent FOUR HOURS entering information for the HMIS. The HMIS links all the service groups together to better help the homeless people. We entered 371 homeless peoples information into it today. We worked hard, and in the end we helped people more then we thought possible on our first day. We have been up 18 hours, we are pretty much running off of sugar, and caffeine. At 10 o'clock we went to Ben and Jerry's ice cream to celebrate my birthday. I would never had thought of a better way to spend my birthday, then by giving back.

Things Are Heating Up!

Less than 18 hours till we fly out to Las Vegas. We are ready to serve God and help were we can, touching the lives of others who have experienced homelessness and poverty. We will "Be The Change."

Just a few hours ago, we were commissioned and sent by the children of St. Luke Lutheran Church. We have been prayed over, blessed, trained, taught, and have alreadty begun serving those in Portland who have needs.

Monday at 4:44 AM we'll say good bye to our family and friends and head out to the HOT HOT HOT city of Las Vegas. It will be a great experience and I hope each of us will be changed in some meaningful ways and have some experiences we will remember for the rest of our lives. Here are a couple of photos of most of the group. We have all been so busy,
the whole team has not yet been together in one place. Though for each day of this upcoming week, we'll be together serving, learning, helping, growing, laughing, playing -and maybe even getting some sleep. We have a great youth group with a great bunch of young men and women. It is a privilege for me to be one of their leaders.

Thanks for praying for us and following this blog. Many thanks to Hailey and Cara for taking the leadership in setting this up.
>>> Scott