Bowery Mission Trip Story Continued :]

I defintely saw a different since of NYC. People sleeping on a peice of cardboard, with a blanket, their fingers looking black, either from dirty, or disease, theer facial hair being a complete mess, and being almost too weak to move or thank us for giving them a bottle of the Lipton Tea. Handing out food to I don't know how many people on the streets. When we were packing up the truck with empty boxes, a man came up to us. He was holding one of the Diet Lipton Green Tea bottles. He didn't seem... normal... and he asked loudly who was handing out those bottles. I thought he was going to say there was something wrong with it or something and get mad, but when we said we were the people, he thanked us for handed them out, he was so happy, saying it was so great to have it. When we offered him another one (they were probably a liter and a half?) He said, "No, no thank you, I've already got one! This is enough! Thank you SO much, guys!" That made me so happy that he personally came back to thank us. Seeing how grateful he was for that made me so thankful I could go on that trip. Also back at the Bowery Mission we worked in the kitchen for about 5 hours that day. Mostly cutting 140 cabbai(=plural of cabbage :P) AND WE WON THE GOLDEN CABBAI. Haha sorry. Fun in the kitchen. I SAW THEM CUT LITTLE CHICKEN BODIES IN HALF. CORRECTION, VICIOUSLY SLAM THE KNIFE DOWN I didn't eat the chicken that night. We served a couple meals to the men there too. They have one meal for the men who live there, and about and hour later have one for the community, homeless men on the streets who come in for the meals. So even the men who lived there, they were treated so much better than other shelters are like, I think. Which is great for them to have that opportunity. Seeing those men who came in for the community meal was just, heart breaking. They looked so sad, yet so happy to even jsut get a meal. The food didn't look too appetizing to me, and I'm sure it wasn't to them, but they still ate it. Bratty little me wouldn't have eaten it if my food looked like that at home. It's not like im selfish and conceided and ungrateful. I really and glad for what I have and it's not like going on that trip I NEEDED that realization and needed to change my life and realize more people are needy. But no matter how greedy or in need of help you are, that experience would have changed anyone's life. I hope I can go next year, it was just so amazing. I will never forget about that. Another cool thing is that have a little church too. And on Saturday nights (it might be every night, I don't know) If people of the community need a place to stay, they can, but part of the agreement is to go to church the next day. So on Sunday we went to their service. Now, most of the people were African-American or Hispanic, so the service was like in those movies where they show like a church ful of Afrian-Americans and they're all like "AMEN" "HALLELUJIA!" "JESUS!" "YES LORD!" It was cool to experience that :P Growing up in an extremely white town, I never got the chance to go to a church like that :P I can't believe ONE weekend could have such a life changing experience involved. We also got to go to Rockefeller Center, we rode the subway there, but walked back (SIXTY BLOCKS!) As we were walking back, it started to snow. That is a moment in my life I'll never forget, New York City during Christmas time and snow. It was like in a movie. Perfect. That was probably the most memorable, life changing weekend I will ever have.