Week 6: Holy Redeemer-Tuesday

       Today was Migrant Immersion Day at the Agape service project. We all woke up at 5:15 this morning so that we could go to a local farm to do work. Some went to a farm to pick blueberries, and others went to a local u-pick farm to weed crops. We all worked for about four hours, and we learned some challenges of consistent farm labor, but also saw the positive results of teamwork from everyone. A lot of land could be covered in just a few hours. After the farm work in the morning, everyone went to the YMCA so that we could take our first showers of the week, which was very refreshing. Then came our next scenario: each of yesterday's families was given a small portion of money with which to buy their dinner from a local grocery store, and then we had to go back and prepare it. With about $1.25 per family member, the families were not able to get the highest quality foods. After dinner, we went out to a nearby migrant camp and played with the migrant workers' kids for awhile. The children were thrilled to see us and play games with them. Even after doing anything from nail-painting to dodge ball, we were even disappointed when we had to leave. Throughout the course of the day, we also grew in our understanding of reverence, today's featured gift of the Holy Spirit.

       Before some of the missionaries went to VBS, instead of Migrant Immersion Day, we prayed a diversity rosary for the migrants and our peers who were going to work on a farm today. We, too, woke up at 5:15am, so with the time before we needed to be at the camps we made lunch for the workers (for VBS) and all the children participating in VBS at the migrant camp, prayed the rosary, and went to several stores for some supplies needed for the crafts we planned for the kids. We also prepared several skits about the Kingdom of God to make it easier for the kids to understand, and after we performed it, we helped them into several small skit groups and helped them recreate the skit to perform for us. While teaching them about the Kingdom of God, we learned that we are all princes and princesses of the kingdom and a lot of the girls were very excited about being a princess. As a worker, it was so amazing to watch their faces light up at the sound of the question "Who wants to do a craft?". The crafts we made consisted of making popsicle stick kingdoms, coffee filter and popsicle stick angles, and even painting a small pot and planting a beautiful flower in it to represent how beautiful we make God's Kingdom when we love Him and everyone around us. All in all, it was another tiring day at the migrant camps, but while it is happening the kid's seem to exude enough laughter and excitement to give all the workers energy to serve them for about 5 hours with pure joy in being able to be there with kids and make their a little more exciting than they had anticipated.