Today was a blessed day. We started off as usual driving to the café and serving the people there. I sat down with a guy named Jerome who talked to us and was excited to hear about us volunteering. My responsibilities were to cut up an entire box of zucchini and cook it. I also took all the chicken out the oven and prepared it for serving then I served the members of the café. For desert they had chess pie which is something I’ve never heard of before but it became one of my favorite pies after trying it. We also talked to another café attendee who I didn’t get her name but was very funny. She was telling us how she had an apple pie that she was unable to cook because her oven was full of insects that would eat the pie before she got to it. Another worker named Willy told us how he was raised on a farm and used to pee himself at the age of 5 because the outhouse was past the pigsty and the pigs terrified him. Overall it has been another successful day at the café. After the Café we picked up Alyssa who has been working in the administrative section of the CSS helping the members out with forming resumes.
Once all collected we went to visit the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial and got a taste of the history and saw a few artifacts such as the cart used to carry his casket. It was a touching moment for all of us. We attempted to visit the House MLK used to live it but it was closed and started raining on us so we went back to the van.
Alyssa hadn’t eaten yet because she was not present at the café so we took her to The Varsity, the world’s largest drive in restaurant, famous for their orange drink. I liked it but it wasn’t anything too special. On our way out we saw a man pushing his car on the highway so a few of us jumped out to help. Why not right? Since we are in Atlanta to help I don’t think it would be reasonable to limit our service to just the people of the café.
We visited Linox Square which was a shopping mall for a few hours and headed back to the church.
Tonight, the church was having a dinner for the homeless, different people than the ones at Café 458. These people were mostly war veterans with a few other various other backgrounds. I sat with a guy named Larry who is a Vietnam veteran taking classes trying to get his life back on track. He was telling me the government wasn’t organized enough back in the day to take care of all the veterans and he was just another victim who fell through the cracks of the system. Ironically he had wonderful positive energy and he was the one who told me “Don’t worry things will get better”. That sentence left me awestruck. Witnessing someone go through so much hardship but still be happy enough to push through and see the positives of the world was an amazing experience for me. He told me that happiness is in the head and that anybody can be comfortable if they convince themselves they are. He shared very wise words of wisdom that I appreciate and will carry with me for a long time. After dinner we packed up the tables and helped clean up the church lobby.
We went to the YMCA to shower again and came back to cool down and relax. The Reverend was in the church having a meeting but after that he came and talked to us about his entire life journey. We asked him questions about his choices in life and how he handled coming out to his parents. His overarching answer was that everyone should learn to love themselves and without loving yourself it will be hard to love god because god created us and he wants us to love his creation and accept what he has destined for us. He exposed the fact that many people in rural areas or coming from small towns don’t realize that the world is filled with unique people of various sexualities and that there is a spectrum ranging from straight to homosexual. He gave us insight and background to his life which was very inspiring and emotional for all of us. Everyone could sense his intentions of attempting to spread love throughout all of humanity and helping people accept themselves for who they really are instead of trying to conform to society constraints that keep changing with time.
I am thankful for this eye opening journey and thankful that we have been safe so far and I am excited to share these stories with my friends and family when I return.
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