Mission Accomplished

All are back safe and sound. They arrived in Orofino 6:15 pm last night. We have missed them! There will be so much they have to share with us. God bless.

Diversity

Pastor Matthew reported that Friday they were up at 6:15 am, packed, cleaned up the church and turned in evaluations of their week-long mission experience. Altogether there had been 40 people (including the adults) from 3 different churches. In addition to our youth from ELCA Ascension Lutheran Church, there were Youth from an ELCA Lutheran church in Bellingham, Washington and a Catholic church group from Bloomington, Minnesota. The sponsoring church gave them breakfast, they said their good-byes, and by 8:30 they were on their way to do some final sight-seeing.

They went to Pier 39 where there were tons of shops and a variety of street performers. There were magic tricks and card tricks, a lady singing jazz who was really good, and two performers were silver from head to toe. Even their faces were painted silver. They had a boombox playing music and they did a robot-like dance. At times they would stand perfectly still and not even seem human. Sights also included 10-12 sea lions.

Another sight was Haight-Ashbury where "the hippie thing is still in full swing". This is "the 40th Anniversary of the '67 Summer of Love" so pastor explained about that. There were lots of really great shops, including second-hand shops with great funky clothes. Jesse found a bright orange blazer. From then on he was easy to spot in a crowd.

Lunch was at "In and Out Burger", followed by more sight-seeing. They did go to Fisherman's Wharf. It was cold and windy. There was a mist coming off the water. They went to Castro - a street and area in San Francisco populated by gays and lesbians. "There was a lot of diversity," Pastor said. There were guys holding hands. The residents of that area were proud of their culture. They also got crabby toward tourists who stared.

In their travels they came across people who liked to dress in dark clothes and wear a lot of leather. Many had tattoos and wild hair - some spiked and some in unusual colors.

After a full day of seeing sights in San Francisco, they crossed the Bay Bridge and headed to Berkley. They spent the night at the Lutheran Church of the Cross, which is an interesting church that operates a homeless shelter for teenage runaways. The next morning they noticed some scary-looking street toughened men outside washing cars. Eventually some of the youth approached them and found out that they were in a program called "Options" which helps drug addicts break away from a life of drug use.

They were near Reno when Pastor called in this information yesterday afternoon. They were headed to Winnemucca and a nice motel where they could "lounge by the pool".