Teens build beds, feed homeless, learn life lessons

Palm Coast Observer
Neighbors

Sixty teens and adults from Parkview Baptist Church recently traveled to Jacksonville to participate in the Jesus to Jax Missions Camp. The camp worked with the Trinity Rescue Mission, Trinity Women and Children’s Shelter, Freedom Farm — a drug rehab center — and Second Harvest Food Bank.

They served in the shelter by feeding the homeless, serving meals and organizing and giving away food. At the Rescue Mission and Women and Children’s Shelter, there has been a bed bug problem, so the students put together new metal bunks for the shelter.

The lesson that the youth said they learned from the trip was to not take what they have for granted. Another was that everyone is just one step, one wrong decision or one compromise away from being homeless themselves.

“I got to see lives that were very different from my own, which is something that my mother had been telling me for quite some time,” said Matthew Mwaura. “Through the days, I was able to see that there are lives out there that really struggle and don’t have it easy.”

But something else that stood out for Mwaura is the opportunity for him to serve.

“I got to see that there is always something that you can do to change the lives of different people,” he said. “It can start off with just one person but eventually that can become 10 or 100 or maybe even 1,000. There is always an opportunity to give to others that don’t have what you do.

“There is always an opportunity to share the word of God. It’s up to me to take that opportunity.”