Students - July 2022 - Salt Lake City - Day 1

Today was a great and busy day! We started the day out by heading over to Lakeside Community Church and they were so excited to discover we were going to be helping the church with a parade and a carnival! All of the boys and us 5 girls were asked to help walk in the parade to hand out information on Operation Christmas child PLUS the carnival AND a super exciting youth event for later that evening! They had a huge turnout for their Heritage Day parade! It was like Christmas in July because we also got to hand out candy canes with our information! The church was also really excited to place second overall for their float, we found it so interesting that the church couldn’t enter into the parade as a church but instead as Operation Christmas Child, but they have great relationships and we felt very welcomed by a lot of families. When the parade was over, we returned to the church, and we helped out with the carnival that had an awesome petting zoo! (Side note there were 3 bunnies they were willing to sell us for $10 each but our leaders said no). During lunch the pastor of the church talked with us about how important relationships are in the community and how important it is to offer support and outreach and coming alongside the community. In fact, while he was talking to us the mayor showed up and gave his personal cell phone to the pastor as the pastor hasn’t been able to get through to him through the proper channels. After lunch we headed to the Ogden Connection Center and got see the truck lift that the Woodmen students had donated money for last year in action! Alfred had picked up a lot of pallets of food that we all sorted for the distribution center. At first it was a little chaotic, but we quickly picked up on systems that would work well, and we worked together as a team to get it done in time to have a quiet time back at our base. We then went back to Lakeside for an amazing youth night full of games, food, worship and lots of Jesus! We all cried, we loved the message, it was impactful and motivating! A great way to start out an awesome missions’ trip!

Annie, Hannah, Addie, Rylee, and Elleigh

- Emma Birky