Today was another good day. We began as usual with a short team devotion before heading out to our first assignment, Hope Women’s Center. There we helped out by organizing and inventorying their surplus resources, bundling diapers for distribution, sorting clothes and tidying up their thrift shop. We look forward to going back tomorrow when we expect to have the opportunity to look after children while their mothers are in parenting classes. Hope is very intention about bringing the Gospel into everything they do, so we’re excited to be able to help out as they minister to the ladies who come to them for help.

Inventory in the back lot.

“Hope Women’s Center serves women facing any difficult life situation. Whether they are faced with poverty, domestic or sexual abuse, unplanned pregnancy, unemployment, single parenting, prostitution, drug/alcohol abuse, or family conflict, our trained mentors and teachers are available to help provide assistance, encouragement, support, and the necessary tools to make positive changes for their future.”

During the afternoon we went to a U-Haul center and sorted clothing for the Phoenix HopeFest, a city-wide outreach involving a broad cross-section of churches, ministries and charitable organization aimed at simply caring for the less fortunate of the area. By participating in the event Mercy Hill is showing the community that they really do love Phoenix, its not just a lot of lip service. They are trying to build bridges that will ultimately lead to Gospel conversations, but that takes time. The old saying that goes, “people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care,” is truer now than ever before in this area. Even thought the actual event isn’t until later in the summer, by participating in the preparations now, Mercy Hill is making headway in that regard.

Anthony and the team sorted for hours and barely made a dent in the huge stock of clothing to be given away at HopeFest.

This evening we had the chance to attend an open-air worship service downtown, but decided to turn it down as we are well and truly worn out so far. Tomorrow will look a lot like today as we were invited back to help again with the Hope Fest and decided to go ahead and take the opportunity to serve.