"Metigoshe Ministries is Adventure Anchored in Christ where people experience and celebrate the gifts of God in a life together."
-Metigoshe Ministries Mission Statement
Having lived in Washington for the majority of my life, taking a trip to Seattle is nothing new. This past week, however, I took the best trip to Seattle that I have ever taken. This past week I was a part of leading a high school service trip to Seattle where, surprisingly enough, it did not rain and we did some pretty incredible stuff:
1. We volunteered at Northwest Harvest Food Bank in Kent and bagged several thousand pounds of rice for several thousand families who need it. It was incredible to see everyone work so hard to achieve a big goal.
2. We worked with Volunteer Chore Services and cleaned apartments for people with low income. This time probably had the biggest impact on our group, because we were able to see and work with who we were working for. One of the guys who we cleaned his apartment for was from Ethiopia and he had a positive attitude about everything. When asked about his favorite part of Seattle, he said, "North, South, East, West; I love it all." Another guy we cleaned for became disabled a few years ago and could not bend over, so anything he dropped stayed there. When we first walked in, it looked like a scene from the TV show, "Hoarders." It was a disaster. Even though we got a lot done and it looked better when time ran out, the group wished they could have done more for this guy. It was incredible.
3. We worked with Earth Corps and uprooted vines and chopped down blackberry bushes at the Washington State Aboretum. This project was the hardest for the group to understand. As we worked away in the hot sun, some of the group began to ask me how this would make any impact at all. I told them to look in my perspective. This place is almost quite literally my backyard, and I personally like how beautiful my backyard is. And I would like to see my future children and future grandchildren to see the natural beauty of this place. Then I told them to imagine that if we hadn't done what we did that day, these invasive species would have taken over and it wouldn't look as pretty. What we do today may not have an immediate impact, but it will have a lasting impact for future generations.
4. Last, but not least, we made 450 sandwich bags and delivered them to the Men's Shelter in downtown Seattle. This project was probably my favorite. We bought $1000 worth of sandwich supplies: bread, meat, cheese; and we also bought several bags of chips, bananas and juice boxes. All of these things that we take for granted sometimes. These are the small, insignificant things that we had back in preschool or kindergarten. In Matthew 14 we learn that Jesus uses just five loaves of bread and two fish to feed 5000 people. Talk about insignificant. I could probably eat five loaves of bread and two fish myself, but that's not the point is it? Jesus calls us to be examples of him, and that is exactly what we did. We took insignificant things in our lives and gave it to those who actually needed it. And just think of the gratefulness of the people at the Men's Shelter. As soon as we walked through the doors, the people there were endlessly thanking us and were in awe of the 450 sandwich bags that we carried in. 5000 is a large number, but 450 is still pretty significant right?
Metigoshe Ministries presides in the Turtle Mountains of North Dakota, but our Adventure Anchored in Christ happened a little over a thousand miles from the Turtle Mountains. By showing God's love all over Seattle, we were able to experience and celebrate that gift with people from the Pacific Northwest and take what we learned back to the Midwest.
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