Emily Gierczynski, Missionary

My experience on the Urban Mission Trip through Light of Life allowed me to see the world in a different way. One of my favorite experiences from the trip was serving dinner to the homeless people at Light of Life. At first, I was very apprehensive to serve the homeless men who came through the doors. By the end I realized that those men aren’t so different from anybody else. They are people just like me. It was so amazing to meet and have conversation with the people that we had been helping behind the scenes leading up to that moment. We ended up serving over 90 homeless men that evening.

My low for the week was cleaning up the homeless camps. The camps we went to were repulsive. I had to clean up the most disgusting trash. That is certainly no way to live. One of the most surprising things about the camps was that they were right by the road. People drive past them every single day and have no idea they are there. That is very disheartening.
I met some pretty incredible people while volunteering. One person that stuck out to me was a man named Ron. Ron had been homeless for many years and had very poor relationships with his family, his children in particular. He came to Light of Life and went through one of their various programs and his whole life changed. He got to go his child’s graduation this year.  While I was at Light of Life he was graduating from his program and his children were going to be there to support him.
 
—Emily Gierczynski, Missionary