Hello all you Joshua blog readers!
It’s Hannah writing this day’s entry and I have loads to tell you. So I woke up bright and early at 430 am. About half of us got ready by 5 am and we headed out to different homeless shelters to help serve breakfast. I went to a place called Midnight Missions and I was scooping potatoes for a couple of hours like at a cafeteria. Midnight Missions is this really cool place where people who were homeless are able to go into rehab programs and have a place to stay and food to eat for free. It’s a one year program and once they complete it, they are given 6 months to get a job. Midnight Missions helps them through this entire process and also offers them Bible studies and prayer groups. We were able to help serve these people breakfast and it was a very interesting experience.
After we were at the Missions, we drove to Downtown LA and were given a few hours to walk around and try to just talk to people and love on them like Jesus did. My partner, Brenden, and I walked around a bit and handed out some water to a few homeless people. We bought some egg salad sandwiches for two as well. At this point it was over an hour into our time and I was starting to feel discouraged because I wasn’t having great conversations with anyone. We passed by a coffee shop and we stopped for a delicious cup of caffeine. As I was sitting there and just feeling so discouraged and helpless, Matt reminded me of what our purpose is to do here. He told us that we need to be willing and open to what the Spirit tells us to do and allow Him to open up the doors to conversation. I felt this weight lifted off of me. It’s not up to us and our own strength to share the gospel, but we need to be vessels for the Holy Spirit to share His love with others through us. We were then able to have so many more conversations for the rest of the time and it was so sweet to spread His love by following His lead instead of trying to lead Him.
After lunch, we made a quick pit stop at the Aquatic Center for a little splash of cleanliness. We all got to shower for the first time this trip! Thank God for that.
We then drove to the Grove. Yes, we had breakfast with the homeless and dinner with the bougie people of LA. We were given a few more hours to, once again, talk to people and share God’s love. Brenden and I started talking to this girl at Barnes and Nobel. She’s from Brazil and we were able to talk with her for like an hour and a half. Jesus even was mentioned and we talked about her problems with the church and the way the Catholics go about it all. Even though 80% of the conversation was on her life and movies, 20% was true evangelism. It was such a beautiful moment to talk to a stranger about Jesus and I praise God for granting us the opportunity to do that.
At this point I was getting pretty tired and Brenden was ready for dinner, so we hit the farmer’s market. We chowed down and I finished it off with a waffle chai tea shot. Quite delicious, if I do say so myself. Staff then treated us to the Griffith Observatory. We got to look around there for an hour and just explore the different exhibits that it had to offer.
That about wraps up our day. Well that was my day. Most of us had similar ones, but this one was mine. I feel drained and tired, but hopeful and proud that I am carrying out the work that my Father calls me to do.
Thanks for tuning in! Until next time,
Hannah Ruffner