[Sandwich Run] A Personal Reflection

(Guest post by Brandon Fu)

On Valentine's day, most people are more concerned about their dates and themselves, instead of the homeless and the poor, whom most view with varying levels of disapproval, however, the group, LTS (Lead to Serve), part of WaterMark, went to feed these people on Valentine's day. This activity is called the “Sandwich Run” where we made sandwiches and then gave them out for free to those homeless and poor.

The homeless and poor are often thought by society as people who don't try in their jobs, that they “deserved” it, that if they just went and got a job, they would get what they need, what they want. The thing is this is not the case, we, the society, are just treating these people like animals, as well as the fact that it goes into an infinite cycle that they are poor and don't have a job, but because they don't have a house and other things, they cannot getting a job, thus staying poor. This image of the poor is very wrong. When we went out there to those at Berkley, some had rich personalities.

During this trip we made those sandwiches at Berkley, and then, at 1 PM, we split into three groups and then went to People's park and its surrounding area to pass out the sandwiches. I was put into group two and we went to the surrounding areas to pass them out. Near the end of our route, mine was one of the only sandwich bags left, so I went and gave it to one man. This man was very interesting. When I gave the bag to him, he said with broken speech, “Can you say a prayer (for) me”. At first, I couldn't understand, so he got the others in my group and one of them understood, Edward. After we found out what he said, we prayed for him and went on our way. When we got back to the park, I went and had interesting conversations with the ones at the park.

The interesting things about this trip, was that before we even went on the trip, is that we went to mass, and the daily gospel reading was Mark, Chapter 8, verses 14-21. In this passage, Jesus preformed the miracle of feeding five thousand people. This is interesting, as that same day, we went and gave “bread” to about 80 (?) people. In addition, during the briefing, we were told the safety tips and the fact that society looks down on the homeless, and that the homeless weren't treated well, which coincides with that day's (Saturday) Bible Study passage (and the Sunday's Gospel), of Jesus healing the Leper, whom is, in a way, treated very much like the homeless right now in this timeperiod.