BrittanyRothausen

Brittany Rothausen

Homeless Service Reflection 3

March 9, 2009 – Day 3

Today I worked at the Nashville Rescue Mission for the first time. We went on a brief tour and got the see a wall filled with pictures of men who have graduated from the program they run there. I worked in the kitchen for most of the day, preparing food and returning trays. It was really hot in the kitchen and kind of tiring to be on my feet so long, but it was actually pretty rewarding work because I felt like we were accomplishing something and we got to actually interact with some of the homeless people, which we hadn’t really done before. After a while I switched places with someone and went to work downstairs in the basement sorting toiletries. This was one of the more frustrating parts of the day because I didn’t feel like we were accomplishing anything. The warehouse was so huge and there were so many boxes. There wasn’t a system to what we were doing and I got the feeling that it was just busy work.

In the evening we went back to the Campus for Human Development where my group worked on Saturday. As we were walking over from the Mission parking lot, a homeless man came up to us and made some offensive comments. It took a lot of self-control for me to not talk back to him. I’m still somewhat heated about the incident, but I realize that I can’t really understand what life is like for him so it’s not exactly fair to judge him. Perhaps if I was homeless, I’d resent a bunch of college students with their nice clothes, cell phones, and educations. In reality, the majority of people we have interacted with have been really nice and appreciative of our work. However, it only takes one negative experience to change the way you view everything and unfortunately that seems to be the case tonight.

When we got to the Campus, we watched a movie and played some board games with a few of the participants. Unfortunately there weren’t a lot of them around. I’m not sure if they had other commitments or just weren’t too keen on the idea of spending their evening with us. Still, we had a good time and I’m glad I got to see Wendy again. I have a huge amount of respect for her.