Our Experiential Weekend In Compton

For my first blog of our Thailand STM (short-term mission) I wanted to tell everyone about our first training experience. Wilson had not joined our team yet; Katie, Suzie, Kio, Nan and myself were the members of the team that spent the night in Compton, April 13-14. I Journaled my experience and I wanted to share it with all of our supporters.

Careful this blog is quite lengthy since the evening and next day was filled with experiences.

The experiential weekend was an amazing experience. When we got there we were informed that we would be doing a poverty simulation. This meant that we only had $20 for the day; meals were $6, showers were $4, trips by car were $1 and sleeping indoors was $15. Only a few people chose to sleep indoors since it typically meant that you had to give up all your meals. No one on my STM team chose to sleep inside. We decided to use our money for meals which we had to sign up for in advance, dinner, breakfast and lunch. We also were only allowed 3 posessions, not including our Bible, journal, pen, 1 camera and the clothes that we had on. My team; Katie, Kio, Suzie, Nan and myself thought long and hard on what posessions we would keep to have the maximum benefit to the team. We chose to keep 4 sleeping bags, 2 pillows, 1 cell phone, 1 bottle of water, 1 bag of Hawain watermelon candy, 1 brush, 1 can of Axe bodyspray, 1 dufflebag to carry all of our items, 1 sleeping bag, 1 tube of toothpaste, and 1 bar of soap. It took us quite some time to decide which possessions we wanted to keep since we weren't quite sure what was going to happen to us. It was also interesting to note that we were all willing to sleep outside and to skip showers because it was only for 1 day, but I wonder what our priorities would have been if we had to live like that for longer. My pride had me always believing that I could live on the street if I had to, it would be no big deal. I realize now how wrong I was, how hard it would be to have to skip meals if I wanted to shower, to go hungry just to sleep inside for a night. Thank you God for showing me my pride and helping me to become humble.

In the evening after we selected our posessions, they gave us our 1st meal. During dinner they told us that the next day we would be helping setup, decorate and run a video game tournament for the Salvation Army. We didn't have much time so that evening we all divided up tasks and started creating posters like crazy. Nan created a giant Mario head that everyone loved. She drew him from memory without even really playing the games, amazing. We didn't finish creating posters until just after midnight. For sleep, we were lead out into this courtyard on the corner of Compton Blvd. and a side street. It was a fenced in area so we felt somewhat safe. We really banded together as a team, talking about our future trip and our team leader's past experiences over in Thailand. We all picked sleeping areas really close to each other and prayed together just before nodding off. The ground was pretty hard and I was afraid ants would be crawling all over me in the middle of the night so I had trouble sleeping. Every time I came close to falling asleep I heard cars drag racing down Compton Blvd. The weird part was that my fellow outdoor sleepers all heard different harsh sounds that evening. One heard helicopters all night and another heard a few gunshots off in the distance. God really opened up each of our minds and showed us what Compton was really like, rather than the danger filled Hollywood version that we had been shown. Praise God for showing us not to pass judgement on areas that we have never actually been or experienced ourselves. This will really help us when we head to Thailand to ensure that we don't go over there with our own expectations but to just open up our hearts and trust in God.

One was to always be on time and the other was to always stay with a buddy, because of what might happen to people who wander off by themselves in another country. They told us that their had been a fire and that their would be no breakfast that morning. The service was good. I really felt the presence of God in that Chapel. We worshiped and sang songs and prayed together. We were then given a scavenger hunt to complete. This was called a Poverty Walk. We had to find a way to eat breakfast, collect 50 cans, develop a budget for a poor family of 4, ask people where wealthy, hispanic and african americans generally lived, interview an elderly person and a homeless person, find out where a number of helpful places for the poor were in the neighbourhood (emergency shelters, food stamps, etc.), determine the average cost of items in each of our bedrooms, give something away, find something useful in a dumpster, find out what some terms meant (W.I.C., parole, S.S.I., etc.), sudy a moving section of Matthew. This poverty walk really opened my eyes to a number of things down in Compton. The people were really friendly, but some were suspicious of us. No one was really familiar with where these places were that could help the poor, which I felt was kind of sad. We were asking people that might not have needed these places but that meant if anyone who really needed a place like a homeless shelter, no one could help them. We did find that a pharmacist who knew some of the places to get help, but even the people of the pharmacy counter couldn't help. It was really hard to collect 50 cans since there were so many of us in one area trying to do that. Also reaching into garbage cans was hard to do. When I see a person on the street with a number of cans and bottles hanging off their shopping cart I have more respect for how long it took then to collect all those cans and what they had to do to collect them. This poverty walk was a great way to really see the city of LA and Compton from a different persepective, to see the people of Compton and to see homeless people in a completely new way. I will never forget when Nan pulled that can from the garbage at the Salvation Army dripping with think, green mucas and that memory will constantly remind me of how hard people can have it even so close to home. Thank you Jesus for being with us as we walked through Compton. Thank you God for all the love you have shown me in my own life. I take for granted what God has given me and this experience really showed me what things could be like. God also opened my heart to people in need. I have had a heart for people in need, but now I have been to an area where there are people in need and God showed me what people in need really were like. That they were real people, not images or ideas but real people. Pray with me to ensure that my team and I remember that as we prepare for Thailand and the people that we will be interacting with.

After the poverty walk we came back to the Salvation Army for more exercises. We debriefed from our poverty walk experience. It was cool how everyone had a completely different experience all with in the same few blocks. We did an exercise where half of us were taken into the gym and given instructions and half of us stayed behind. I was with the group that stayed behind and we were told that we were missionaries and our job was set the people in the gym away from their "walk" and into the center of the gym. This was harder than it sounded right away you could tell that they didn't want to leave the wall, that they didn't speak our language and that they didn't like to be touched, any motion scared them, as they tried to find a spot on the wall as for from us as possible. I decided that to get them a little more comfortable with my being there I needed to act as they did. I started toucing the wall and talking about general things. Complimenting their wall, really trying to connect with where they were coming from instead of trying to come into the middle though. I just asked them if they would follow me out to the middle, if they wanted to head out there. After we talked about what worked, some people (Suzie told us some great stuff) described just asking them if they wanted to see the wall from a little further away that they could turn around and make sure the wall was still there as we wlked out there. This really showed us what it might be like out there on our missions trying to deal with people who don't speak English and who have completely different beliefs. At 1:00ish we started getting up the gym for the video game tournament. Our team was given the snacks to prepare. It was great to see how we pulled together to get a task done. The tournament was fun but people were a little dissapointed at the small turnout. My favourite moment was at the end, the D.J. hosted a dance competition. These girls were dancing face to face trying to get each other to back up and stand down. Great dancers, very free to try whatever strikes their fancy but the beat kind of inspired their moves. After that we cleaned up, then proceeded to debrief, answer some questions about the training and eat dinner. We asked for blessings beforehand and it was a great experience as we all just sat and prayed together. Overall this was an amazing weekend that I will never forget. Wow, God just breathes such life into every community and I praise God every day for what he showed me at the Compton Salvation Army.