The Adventure Begins...

     After three hours of good ol' Southern California Friday afternoon traffic, we finally arrived at CSM (Center for Student Missions), where we will be staying for the next week. Quite a different scene than what we're used to back home! The center is a little building by the Metro train tracks, across from Pueblo del Rio housing apartments, one of the largest housing projects in the nation. Your senses are bombarded as soon as you step out of the car...Eminem's rap lyrics boom from the next street over, the air smells of onion, garlic, and cooked meat, and the dirty streets are littered with tents, grocery carts, and boxes...blanket-covered legs sticking out the end.
     The five of us piled out of the car, much better acquainted after the extended trip. Gatra Suhari is from Indonesia and is majoring in religious studies. He's loves food and involves it in his every conversation. Justin Tuot is quiet, but thoughtful and humorous when he does speak. He's Cambodian. Amy Rudra is Indian and an excellent car mechanic, who often has to earn her place in a male-dominated profession. She took 36 credits per quarter to finish her major in a year and a half. Jasmine Pagaduan interprets life through drawing, is a freshman doing pre-nursing and is, in her words, "a proud Filipino!" 
     I already feel it's going to be a fun trip.
    After some debriefing, and going over the week's guidelines and schedule we head out to dinner! (Much to Gatra's excitement especially.) Tonight's menu is food from Honduras at "Honduran Kitchen", a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant. Each meal had the name of a day of the week, and everyone seemed quite satisfied with their "Monday" through "Fridays" ranging from Arroz con Pollo to Beef Stew, to...my little vegetarian rice and beans with excellent tortillas.

     After dinner, our host from CSM, Sarah Zirbes, took us around the city on a "Prayer Tour". The purpose of the Prayer Tour was to orient us to Los Angeles with its different districts and cultures, while praying together over the city and all of the issues that its people face. We were shocked to find out about the rates of gang involvement for children as young as 8 years old, and the cultural tensions that are still very much present among all races, so much so that train tracks have to separate them. However, we were encouraged by pockets of hope around the city, such as the Charter school "Synergy", educating children out of gangs and making terrific educational leaps among the children of the most poor. Or such as the missions that dot every street in the vicinity of skid row. 
     On the way home, the last part of the tour was called "Snapshots", the things that impacted us the most about the tour. We mentioned the faces we'd seen on Skid Row, cramped together on a sidewalk, as well as the acute dichotomy between this poverty and the venue for The Grammys, three streets over.
      After finally arriving back in the gated confines of our home site, Sarah asked us to lie on the concrete in the CSM parking lot and take a minute to reflect on what we'd seen. We...hesitantly...scouted out the cleanest spot possible and followed her instructions, lowering ourselves down to the cold concrete and carefully setting our heads on the hard floor. 
    This is weird, I thought. How long do we have to lay like this? 
    I began to think of the people who do this every night. I shivered a little, missing my soft, Ikea bed at home.  Man, what a sad, messy, complicated, issue-this homelessness thing, I felt despairingly. I looked up at the sky and, through the clouds saw a couple of stars. Not many, but just a few. Just enough to make me feel as if God was still present in this city. I felt a weird peace, lying on that cold concrete, weirdly satisfied at the thought that, even in L.A., there were stars. Like pockets of hope in a dark, cloudy sky.