I spent last week on a mission trip with Group Workcamps Foundation. Our small youth group met up with about 6 others at North Central Christian School in Florissant, MO [near STL]. The former Catholic high school served as a great hub for the different ways our crews served the area in community service jobs. My particular Crew [Crew 1 - later named "Better-than-your-stupid-crew Crew] spent two days at the school doing some renovating and landscaping while the other two days we served at a food bank.
This particular food bank got load of donations of food. From what I could tell it was all food that came straight from grocery stores' storage of outdated and damaged food supplies that I'm sure they can write off for a tax break or something. It was hundreds upon hundreds of banana boxes filled with just about anything you could image. A box might contain either a mix of food products or a mass quantity of the same item. Mostly it was cereal, pop-tarts, condiments, salad dressings, sports drinks, mac-n-cheese, and bent up canned goods of all shapes and sizes. The goal was to remove the contents of the boxes and repack them with a variety of things. Each box would then be shipped to a food pantry to be distributed to families.
The food bank had several groups from different places volunteering, and on the second day there were three distinct. The first was us - Group Workcamps and we were probably about 20. The next was a group of adults from a church or something - about 10. The final was a group of one adult and about 4 youths - probably high schoolers. The best I can guess is that this third and final group was an adult sponsoring some teens doing public service for some kind of trouble they'd been in.
We had been working for a few hours and lunch had passed when a girl came out of the volunteer break area claiming that her purse had been gone through and her money, phone, and ipod were stolen. Someone had taken her purse into the men's room and dumped everything out taking only the valuables. This person probably wasn't interested in Hello Kitty lip gloss.
Almost immediately group 3 was gone. Their sponsor without much worry about stereotyping grabbed his students out of the work room and began questioning the boys about the stolen items. Although none of them confessed to doing it [nor did any of them have those items on them] they were able to make a suggestion as to the possible location of said items that proved to be 100% correct. Whoever took the items dumped them in the trash so they could later be retrieved when people were leaving. Group 3 left immediately after the items were found - that took a matter of 20 min.
I was starting to feel a little bummed. I didn't want to judge. I don't need to know everyone's dirt. I just wanted to work hard and get the job done...after all, we were all there doing a task that will benefit those in need. I actually was having a fun time watching all the students and adults work together - backgrounds irrelevant - to do good. News of the theft took the wind out of my sails a little, but at least it wasn't any of our kids.
I was pondering these things in the break room over a cup of water. When I came back out, I noticed that a small group of our students decided that instead of packing up one of the bags of candy that passed by them they'd just eat it. My heart sank. Soon I noticed that they were also taking the prizes out of already opened cereal and snack boxes for their own. I expressed my disappointment in them and got back to work.
It sucks that even when doing a good thing, people will fail to be good people. I suppose that's why the Good News is so good, but that doesn't make me feel better about that day at the food bank.
The irony of it all was that night during the evening program's "God Sightings" - times where people describe where they saw God working that day - the ipod/phone theft victim told all the youth groups her God sighting was when she got her stuff back. God helped her get her stuff back all while turning his attention away from her stealing from another. Isn't that just great?!
