Last weekend was an exciting one for team Haiti, as it was 12 Stone Church's CIA (Compassion In Action) on Saturday- The first time the Haiti team worked together! Last saturday over 1,O0o volunteers sporting matching gray CIA shirts were deployed to various locations in Atlanta and Gwinnett to do some kind of work in communities that need them the most. As for the Haiti team, we were among several who were sent out to a rough neighborhood in East Atlanta to pick up trash and tires that littered the road where children played and gangsters converged. As we worked that day, we were encircled by children of the neighborhood on donated bikes that they had earned by picking up three bags of trash each. It was like watching the embodiment of God's hand at work there through the O'Mara's bike ministry. The couple that hosted us for that day (and made a mean bowl of chili at lunch break) named Becky and Tim O'Mara, had moved into that neighborhood specifically for the purpose of cleaning it up and shining God's light into the dark places that dwell there and on Saturday we were blessed enough to do a little 'shining' there too.
We began by meeting at 12 Stone Church, all 1,O0o of us, to be debriefed and led through an amazing time of worship then be given the location we would be carpooling to, and set off by the carful to begin our work in the East Atlanta neighborhood. Once we arrived there we were given work gloves if we had none, and pepper spray in lieu of any grumpy dogs we might encounter along the way. After testing the pepper spray in the air by giving one "harmless" squeeze of the bottle, we rendered it extremely effective after the invisible mist of pepper spray hit a few of the Haiti team members in the face who were hanging out down wind, and sadly caused some extreme discomfort and watery eyes for about twenty minutes. But don't worry, it was pretty funny. :)
Becky and Tim gave us a map of the neighborhood with a course plotted for us to walk, picking up trash that's on the side of the road and bagging it along the way. Trash bags and claw-grabber things distributed, the Haiti team made good time as we quickly and efficiently rid the small neighborhood of its garbage, all the while laughing and joking along the way as we were in the presence off good company. We found all kinds of "treasures", and our own Deidrick Overby and Corbin Klett had a trash collecting contest... I'm not sure who won, although Deidrick did pick up a dead squirrel. Yuck!
It was a beautiful thing to see that day: college kids- a generation normally so caught up in themselves and egocentricity, now defying the stereotype in the name of Christ to take a Saturday morning and pick up trash in an impoverished neighborhood. The families saw what we were doing for their neighborhood and, I'm not gonna lie, it felt good when they thanked us. Here's a little bit of what they were seeing:
