DAY 2

Tuesday, August 4th

Start our day by going to SASLA (Salvation Army South Los Angeles). They are having a summer camp program for kids. The center is great, it has an indoor basketball gym (yuppp...my basketball buddies here will envy the indoor facility...hehehe), art room, computer lab, and game room (xbox, foosball, pool tables, and air hockey...great huh?).

I think Ocep, Kevin, and I are first assigned to the gym. Meet a couple of staffs there, and there is no instruction what to do or what to help. We just sitting out on the bench do nothing...staring on each other, and watch the kids play basketball, they are great...maybe some of them will be the next NBA stars. I just find out that Baron Davis (ex Golden State Warriors who goes back to Clippers) and Tayshaun Prince (Detroit Pistons) grew up in this neighborhood. And also Venus and Serena Williams, for your information. 45 minutes after watching their games, we just go to the court and shoot around the ball with the kids, try to have some conversation with them...not much

Then we are rotated, went to the computer lab. Helping kids to fix those freeze computers when they try to login to the web and play online games. Most of them are playing games, and some of the kids are really into the game like "dressuplikemichaeljackson" (huh????). We spend the time talking with the kids while they are playing games and teach them to be patient when the web page is loading....

Go back to the gym, now it's filled with younger kids. Can connect with them better...do some piggy back ride to a couple of them, and later I find out that piggy back is not allowed on Salvation Army, so I stop the game. Spend the rest of the time talking with the kids and get to know them while playing some simple games.

The next activity....Serving Group 1 is doing City Search at downtown LA. The purpose is to get to know the downtown life and people on the street. We are split into two groups. Some of the things that we learn is that it's hard to live in downtown. The rent is expensive, to open up a small business is expensive (a monthly rent for a small store on Broadway can cost up to $9,000!!!), restaurants are not giving free water, and it's even hard to find a public restroom. We think that it's almost impossible for people with low salary to live in downtown. The environment is just so harsh.

One of the given tasks is to invite someone for lunch. After looking around the metro station, we found one homeless man and ask him to go to lunch, and he reject the offer. Then we find a man sitting on a wheeled-walking-device (I don't know the name of this device). We say greeting to him, introduce ourselves, and ask him to join our lunch. He accept that, but it's hard for him to walk around. We decided to buy the food, come back to his spot, and have a lunch on the street (that person suggests us to buy chinese food, I think because he sees that we are all Asians =P). We have the lunch and have some conversation. He used to be living on the street (on Skid Row), and eventually get out from the street because his family puts him into a retirement home in which we praise God for his family that cares for him. This person is so wise as he gives us some advices about life and how tough is the life on the street, and how we should take care on each other. He used to be a king of Mardi Gras, but he later mentions that there's only one King above all kings, Jesus Christ...praise God for hearing such wonderful testimony. When he talks, almost all of the time he praised God...we're kind of get such a blessing from this person, also praise God for that. We finish our conversation and end it up by praying for him. We give out another box of chinese food to a homeless on a bike that comes by and ask us for food. I think brother Dan has some conversation with him.

We go around the park and we are supposed to talk and pray for a businessperson. We find a well suited Indian man and ask him if we can sit and talk. He says that he can't speak English...but say it in good English. Dan says that his English is just perfect and he says, "Do you know how to speak in Gujarati? I can only speak that language"...of course in English. Sensing that he doesn't want to have a conversation, we just move on...We meet a person sitting down on the bench near the grass, ask him if we can talk, and he says yes. He is used to be a teacher in Puerto Rico, now working as salesperson (correct me if I'm wrong), just broke up with his girlfriend, and is studying to take a test to be a teacher in the US. He lost all of his original diploma and certificate as someone stole his bag. It seems that he needs friends and so lonely. We have a conversation with him to strengthen and to keep his hope on God amidst of the struggles in his life. From the conversation we observe that he believes on God but there are many ways to come to salvation. We pray for him for his struggles that God will strengthen him and pray that Jesus has died on the cross to redeem his sins, and there is only one way to salvation which is through believing on Jesus Christ only. We talk for some more about stuffs, I think we have more than one hour conversation with this person until the rest of our group members are getting worried and think that we are lost, and they start praying for us. Thank you...thank you guys...we are not lost =)

We complete this 4 hours walking around the city, talking, and praying for the people. It's exhausting but it's an eye opening experience. We go back to have some fried chicken and waffle (no it's not KFC nor Popeye)...it's the home made one, kind of like soul food...so good...I never eat chicken and waffle before. Go home to the housing site and get ready for tomorrow...