Thankful Tuesday, from a soup kitchen

I’m writing from a soup kitchen in the French Quarter in New Orleans. Here there are big rooms packed with rickety bunk beds (some of them piled three high!) on the second and third floors. The soup kitchen is on the first floor. There are around 150 high school students staying here with me and their leaders.

And I’m thankful for…

•  The opportunity to see high school kids eating the food put in front of them, without complaint, despite it being some pretty tasteless stuff.
• The kindness I’ve experienced so far. I spent the morning yesterday unloading the biggest box of cheese you can imagine (like, a refrigerator size box of cheese) with a group of 5 kids who volunteered to work in the soup kitchen all day.) And the kids who worked with me were so generous and willing to do what was asked of them. It was just sweet to see it.
•  The gift of working so hard that a PB&J on white bread tastes pretty good.
• Getting to tell kids from the front of a big room how much God loves them and knowing in my deepest gut that I believed it…for them and for me.
• Skype and getting to see my boys on screen yesterday. For how happy they were. For my parents and their willingness to watch them.
• It’s not normal that you can go to a youth mission trip and get more rest than at home. But yesterday, I skipped the afternoon activity and took the best nap ever. It was really good rest. I’m thankful.
• I’m thankful for the chance to look in the faces of the homeless here and eat the same food they’re being given and be reminded in a small way of the kind of suffering in their lives.

It’s Thankful Tuesday. I probably won’t be around online today to respond to any comments, but I’d love for you leave them anyway. Link up with your own Thankful Tuesday list and I’ll see you soon…