Families On Mission

In Los Angeles, the poor and the rich live very close together. Sometimes they are only divided by a freeway, a hill or a few miles. The effect on the rich is that they do not know the poor. Stereotypes and fear seem easier than taking risks in relationship.

Earlier this month a family group came from a local church, from a well off community less than 15 miles away. Parents came with their children. Through activities designed for families to serve as a whole, members of the group, from ages 7 to 57, encountered people in need in a whole new way.

This group’s first activity was Meet-a-Need. In small teams they walked around Broadway in downtown LA, and found someone they could help. They had five dollars to use creatively with someone they met. I don’t know exactly what was said, but I know this group was affected by the experience. These families met someone with much less money than them, but no less heart or feeling. As usually happens with our groups that come from all over, the visitors end up learning much more than they teach.

Less than two weeks after this group left, we received an update from one mother on this local, family trip. She said it was too soon that weekend for her to see what her seven year-old son had learned. She wanted us to know the impact the weekend trip had on her and her son.

The weekend following her CSM trip in LA, Belinda was visiting San Francisco with her family. While relaxing outside of a museum in a downtown SF park, she and her son saw a man who looked confused. Despite freezing rain that morning, the man had apparently been wading in the fountain, because his pants were wet up to his knees. As he wandered around and then headed back into the fountain, a security guard started yelling loudly at him that he could not collect coins. Belinda’s son turned to his mom and remarked, "I think if this man and the policeman could just talk they would understand each other better."

Belinda wrote to us that she could tell in that one reaction that her son truly saw the fountain wader as a man with needs. He saw him as a human being, not as a nuisance or a sub-human.
I believe that Belinda’s effort to take her son and her whole family to serve in Los Angeles was a powerful example. Her son learned as much from her model as from the lessons of our CSM trip.

CSM’s lofty mission is to transform people and churches and so honor Christ. Encountering those in need is a powerfully transforming act as we see that we all have needs. Maybe if we just talk to people we will understand each other better.
[Reflection by Rachel Hamilton CSM-LA Director. I was blessed to host their group.]