hot pockets = love

let me begin by saying that as a college student in the middle of her summer...my body doesn't comprehend 5:30am. as i yanked myself out of bed and began to get ready i glanced out the window to still see darkness...and i groaned. i don't get how so many of you are able to get up that early and be your awesome, functioning selves. i adore all of you for it.

as i struggled into main street with my t-shirt & jeans, 'stros hat, and no make up... ken let out a hearty laugh (perhaps i'm not cute at 6am, oh well.) and as our gang began to gather the wheels started turning. mark and ken were already getting things in order when i showed up. soon we had terri davis, al from one of the hispanic churches here in tomball, julie b, dana, and pat. what an awesome bunch of people, right? s o we giggled and we yawned and we baked hot pockets and the midst of all that...the Kingdom was growing. we had finally stopped talking about it, and we had finally started doing something.

while we filled our bags with hot pockets, apples, and OJ we would sometimes look out the windows of MSC to see men walking in the deep blue hues of morning. these were the hispanic men we wanted to love. it burns somewhere deep inside to realize where they're headed. as they walk, they almost appear like zombies. if you were to look down main street you'd see dozens of these guys... most walking alone and silent and all to the same destination. now, i realize there are so many political and social issues revolved around this, but it doesn't matter. some of these men work hard all week and still don't get paid. i don't care what color your skin is or whether you deserve to be in this wonderful US of A or not...but that simply isn't okay with me, and i'm not sure that jesus is okay with it either.

i'm really glad we had al in our ranks. we may have had food to give but we also had a message to give to these guys..."we care". so we crossed the tracks and rounded the corner and found ourselves on brand new territory. these men were at least able to gather on picnic tables on a sort of pavillion to eat their breakfast, but it still didn't change things. some of these men were still being abused. after we passed out the breakfast, al began to explain that there were cards in the bottom of the bags and small golf pencils that they could use to write down the vehicles info. that they left with. it also had main street's number along with al and his wife's numbers. some of these guys actually looked surprised and some put them in their wallets. after al translated one of the older men that appeared to be in charge stood up and said some words of thanks to al and the rest of us. they appreciated what we were doing. there are several other details of this story that most of you will get later-like the beer cans and trash we hope to clean up, the one white guy hanging out over there, and the rest of the actions we'd like to take to help these men. hopefully some of you guys can join us later as we continue serving the day laborers.

as we walked away from the men and made our short trek back over the tracks to main street, my heart was warmed. the sun had risen on our first day as servants and i felt somewhere in me as if the Kingdom was rejoicing. it's such a simple thing that we're doing, but we're doing something and more will come later.

amen to that you guys...amen.

amen. amen. amen.