I Believe in Life

I believe in life.

I hear it all the time “Live every moment to the fullest.” This quote can mean many different meanings depending on how you interpret it. My interpretation is don’t take things for granted. I do it all the time but it’s best to just look around and see how blessed I am. Yeah, I could have a way better life, better friends, a better car, etc. But I also can have it way worse. So many kids or adults would do anything to live the way that I live.

Recently I went on a trip to Detroit with my church group. A town with a horrible wreck. I was afraid to go. After hearing stories of murder, gangs, and danger I didn’t want to leave the safety of my house. But I was going for a huge church gathering called ELCA Rise Up National Youth Gathering. Who would’ve thought 30,000 youth would pay to go to this trip? The trip lasted five days. It was life-changing. So being from Arizona I never thought how bad some people had it. As we walk the streets of Detroit, it wasn’t what I thought it would be. The city was absolutely beautiful. That wasn’t even the most stunning part. As we walked down the streets homeless people would walk up to us and thank us for what we were doing, even though it wasn’t directly towards them. I’ll tell you what we did.

We cleaned up the streets and neighborhoods of Detroit. That’s what the people thanked us for. We were bringing life into the city. Pictures were painted to place outside of abandoned houses to brighten up the house. The landscape around houses was clean. Tires in the neighborhood were collected to be thrown away. Over $400,000 was raised by the money from the youth to give families in Africa freshwater so they don’t have to walk miles to get it. These were only some of the things we did to help out others.

Once I got home from my trip everyone asked me how it went and what I did. I gave them a basic idea of what I explained in this paper then I would get emotional talking about the homeless and what they did for us. If I had extra food I would give it to them but that’s it. That’s all I thought I did for them. One would think to help the homeless and get nothing back, but end up getting more than what was given. Not only did I just tell my family and friends about my experience and what I games but I also got to tell my whole church congregation too! As a sidenote, what do you take for granted?