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On the Tuesday we were out for Thanksgiving Break, I went with my church to downtown Orlando to feed the homeless. My church has a group of people that go out on Tuesday afternoons a few times a month and feeds the homeless but every year around this time we do a big Thanksgiving meal for the homeless. There were around 30 people out there from my church and we brought tons of food. We had turkeys, mashed potatoes, stuffing, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, gravy, mashed sweet potatoes, and lots of pies for dessert. It was great just to see our church coming together to provide food for these people and even to sit down and eat and talk with them. We started the meal off with prayer and a quick message then had people serving food, people passing out drinks, people cleaning up trash and people talking with the homeless people. We didn't just go out there and give them food we actually sat down and talked with many of them. I personally was serving food and cleaning up so I didn't get a chance to have long talks with many people but I did get a chance to talk to some as they came through the line. I was amazed at how many little children there were that were part of a homeless family. One family I talked to said that they were homeless because they had most of their excess money tied up in the stock market and they lost it all. After that both the mother and father lost their jobs and just have not been able to get back on their feet since. I prayed with them before we left to go back home and their are some people at my church looking for them jobs because they are good people. They believe in God and they read the bible to their little 5 year old boy every night.

A lot of the young high schoolers from our youth came out to help and it just made me happy because I knew they were not forced to be there. They chose to go because they really wanted to be there to help out. I was really amazed at how many of them I saw praying with the homeless people and just listening to them and treating them like everyday people. I love participating in that every year and even going down when I'm home to help feed the homeless more than just once a year. The final estimate for how many homeless people that we fed was over 325.

Justin Searles