Week 2: St. Louise & St. Theresa - Thursday

Thursday, June 6, 2017

          Today was celebration day! We first woke up, ate breakfast, had circle time, went to church, went to have lunch in sacred heart, went to swim in Bellingham aquatic center, Went to Sunrise farm to hang with the kids, and had to eat some barbecue! It was an amazing experience, this entire week, however, it was heartbreaking to leave the kids. To them, we were their best friends. On another bright note we got to have more fun and amazing experiences afterwards. We all got to have ice cream, and a talent show, and it was amazing.

                                             lots of love,
                                                 Alexandria W. & Adara M.

Week 2: St. Louise & St. Theresa - Wednesday

    We saw Jesus in everyone that we worked with and everyone that we served. We started off with three different groups. One that went to get toys, another that got produce, and one that packed the truck with all of the food that we collected. After, we all set up the food bank for the migrate workers. At first the workers all lined up with boxes to get food, drinks, etc. All the families went through the tables with items and food which they collected. We ended up serving 126 families which was about 400 people in total. We had such a fun time serving the migrate workers and gained a deeper connection with the migrate workers.  - John Rojas, Evie Aitken

Week 2: St. Louise & St. Theresa - Tuesday

Day 3, Tues. 27-

             Today was a great day! We started the day bright and early at 5:15 am to experience a day in the life of a migrant worker. St. T's went to a blueberry farm and STL went to Growing Veterans organic farm. We spent our morning weeding and picking up sticks, (no trees were harmed in this process.) Although the work was tiring and difficult it was really eye-opening, we still experienced only a fraction of what migrant workers have to do everyday. The hard job we were tasked with didn't phase our good attitudes because we knew what we were doing was for a good cause. Following our immersion experience, we were given the opportunity to take a lovely 5 minute shower;) It was short, but sweet, and we came out semi-clean! After our showers we were placed into families and transported to the fabulous, Grocery Outlet Bargain Market. Here, each ''family'' was given pay for their day's work. The totals ranged from $2.50 and $7.50, so we had a lot of wiggle room. The "families" we given 10 minutes to shop for our ACTUAL dinner. Following this we came back to Sacred Heart for free time where we played cards, mafia, had great conversations, and cooked our dinners. Then we headed backup to Sunrise Migrant camp where we played with our little friends living there. We met a particularly sweet girl named Alma who really brightened our day! It felt good to know we were sharing with these children some love, joy, and happiness despite the hard times they may be going through. It was sad to say goodbye, even though we will see them Thursday! When we returned home to Sacred Heart, we had evening circle time and wrote in our journals. In our small groups we got into really deep topics about the children and how they are going to grow up and work ten times as hard as we worked that day. To wrap up the night we made some sandwiches for our lunch tomorrow and got ready for bed. Over-all, it was an amazing God-filled day!

Live from Sacred Heart, your favorite bloggers;)

Catherine P. and Elsa K.

Week 2: St. Louise & St. Theresa - Monday

Today... it was probably one of the best experiences of my middle school life. I've met amazing little children that have spread love to everybody, and everything that was happening. That was the main part I remember. Other things we did was team building activities that helped me personally getting to know most people. Another thing we did was tabling, which was basically a food drive. Everybody had experienced "bad" people, and everyone experienced amazing, thoughtful people. Overall, today was a great day of learning about our faith and our friends.

- Zelda

Well today was... unique. not in a bad way but well let me just tell you. i think the highlight of my day was going to the migrant camp and playing with the children. i think the one that standed out the most to me was this one 15-17 year old kid (i do not know his real age) and he just got so into it and it made me realize how much we were helping these children and how happy they were happy to see us. later we had to go to some stores and kindly ask people to donate (the entire time i wanted to grab a mega phone and scream donate to us!!). but this taught me 2 things. how many kind people there are, and how many jerks their are. but it was over all great experience and i am surprised how much has happened and yet so little of this trip has happened

-Arthur

Week 2: St. Louise & St. Theresa- Sunday

Today was a fun day. When we arrived I was confused and did not know what we were doing. We got all of our bags and unloaded them into our rooms. After that was played a game with our hands. After that we did a prayer time and reflected on the word Agape. -Ryan

Today was weird. First, everyone went to a park down the street from where we were staying and had pizza. We had too much and gave it away. When we got to the church building we dropped off our stuff and played a game. it was really fun. A bit later we listened to a reading about a storm and thought about how we could relate to the story. Overall it's been a fun day.   -Joshua Frank

Week 1: MQP - Thursday

Thursday was very fun due to us sort of having a party, but I also felt very at peace when we went over to the Church to pray in silence for about 20 minutes. I felt like I was separated from the world and was completely stress free. And I didn't care about what I was going to do after, and I was just in the moment. Next we went swimming with all of the people from our church, and had so much fun! After we went swimming, we then went to sunrise camp to have a barbecue with of the migrant worker families. Which was really enjoyable because we played for a couple hours then ate. But before we ate, there was this one boy (Xavier) who unraveled an entire roll of string, to that string, and started to wrap people with it. And he was just the high of my day because he was just so adorable. So in the end, Thursday was one of my favorite days because it was impactful and very fun!

~Dominick Schulz

Today we celebrated the good works we had done this week. Today, we opened with a Divine Mercy Chaplet. Immediately following, we discussed ways we would act on what we learned this week regarding the plight of the migrant farming community. We then prayed in reflective silence in Sacred Heart. After that, we headed over to the local aquatic center to celebrate and shower before heading off to the migrant camp to have a barbecue and say our goodbyes. I had made a friend, an 8-year-old boy named Kenny, and we had really grown close over the last week. It broke my heart to say goodbye, but I am confident that we will meet again next year. We then closed out the night with various antics at the social hall as we spent our last night together.

~Luke Wall

Week 1: MQP - Wednesday

Agape Day Three 

Started off the day with a morning prayer at Sacred Heart Church, then it was off to set up for the food bank. We had an insane three and a half hours of singing, serving, and learning some Spanish. We had the pleasure of serving 88 families in total. Many of the kids and workers were people we were familiar with from the migrant camp, such an amazing opportunity to serve our friends as they serve us through their work on the fields. Highlight of the day- two little boys that ran around asking for the English translation of words and then repeating them excitedly "oooooh fruit!"

Signing Out, 

-Lolo and Jili 

Week 1: MQP -Tuesday

today a group of us went to sams farm it was super fun but at the same time exhausting, some of are backs just gave up. it was amazing to see that we only worked for 3 hours and we were done but the workers work twice as much as we did! we had so much fun it i loved to help out at the farm!

After we worked in the farms we went to Grocery Outlet and we each had a family of three or four people. We were given money for working in the farms, to buy our lunch. Each person in the family was given $1.25. We had to decide what to buy with that small amount of money.

Then later we went and passed out flyers to the migrant families at their camps. The flyers was for a food bank, where they could pick out the food they needed for free. 

We later went to visit the migrant children and played doge ball and did arts and crafts! Overall we had a great experience today.

Week1: MQP - Monday

This quick glimpse to what these families live like was live changing and wonderful. The children expressed such gratitude and love toward us even though we were doing the minimal thing of just playing with them. Love powered through this boundary and truly enabled us to make a concrete connection with these families. While collecting for the food drive we encountered many generous people who have personally been impacted by the food bank and are willing to give back to help others who are now more in need than them. 

I think that this experience shows the love, or Agape, that is flowing through everyone. Whether it be the migrant families or the Agape group in general, we all have love flowing through us. But this love is more powerful when it is put together. It like an ultra love. Love x2. It shows that even though things can get bad, humans can have a way to make things feel better.

P.S. Thank you to all those who donated today at the grocery stores! Check back Wednesday to see how many families we serve at our food bank!

-The Agape Staff

Week 1: MQP-Sunday

 Today, after 11:30 mass, we headed off to Agape. We drove for two hours, then we stopped at a park. It was raining so we went to go take a tour of the Newman Center. We then drove to Boomers Burgers to indulge in burgers and fries. After dinner, we drove to Sacred Heart church and unpacked the truck of donations. we placed our stuff in our rooms and came up to meet our leaders for the week. Then we prayed and wrote in our journals, and then shared with our small groups. so far this has been great and we will post back tomorrow.

-Maite and Alexa

Here We Go Again: Staff Update 2017

Hey all!

The Agape Service Project is back for another packed summer. Our staff has been working really hard this week getting everything prepped for our first group that arrives on Sunday. Our theme this summer is Catholic Social Teachings and our bible verse is “Stand firm in the faith, be courageous, be strong. Your every act should be done with love.” 1Cor. 16:13-14. We also have a saint for the summer, St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, who we will be asking to pray for us!

This week we have been updating documents, we visited the food bank location, we went to Sunrise to say hi to the kids, and so much more. We are SO EXCITED for you to arrive!

Love,

The Agape Staff
Alexa (Director), Anton (Director), Ana (Assistant Director), Katie (Assistant Director), and Melina (Supervisor)


P.S. Check back here starting Sunday for updates from the kids!