San Francisco Update 2

Yesterday our team vetured out to explore the city during the first half of the day. It turned out being a day of paradox. One strange occurance was half our team had Thai food in little Italy and the other half had pizza in Chinatown. The other thing students wrestled through was the polarized incongruence of affluence and great need in such close neighborhoods. Having spent the majority of our time in the neediest parts of the city, it was hard to reconcile the excess of the tourist traps to the hungry kids we had dinner with later that night.

Today we spent the morning helping the Salvation Army deliver meals to home bound people. All the deliveries were to single room occupancy hotels in the Tenderloin district. It was sobering to realize that our breif interaction dropping off food was the only personal contact most of these people would have today. In the afternoon we helped do some organizing and cleaning in the basement of the Outpost and some went to a local high school track meet. In the evening our group split in two once again. One group served food at the next door residential transitional housing program and soup kitchen for men while the rest of us stayed at the Outpost for the youth game night.

It was another long day and we have seen great need and are humbled by the opportunity to serve.