The tragic sights and scenes we saw were not at all what we expected to see when considering that Philadelphia is in the US, which is a first world country. We encountered many homelessness, pollution, segregation, and the worst of them all – hopelessness. And yet, we saw God working in the city to bring faith and hope to the people. The volunteer work we did at Philly mostly consisted of either serving or preparing food for the homeless. We went to different volunteering programs where waves of people would come into the cafeteria expecting food. We, as volunteers, would serve food to these people until they were all satisfied. At certain times, I thought that some people were insatiable, based on how many times they returned to the line. We’ve served over 1,100 people throughout the week.

We also went to a summer camp everyday where we assisted the teachers. The kids there lived up in dangerous or unhealthy family situations. They saw their time at this camp as the only way to be away from their homes. We talked with them, played games with them, and supervised their play times. I was blessed to see these kids who grew up in such difficult situations, look up to us. I pray that God would work in these capable young people, to give hope to this city. After a days work of volunteering with various organizations and eating delicious, diverse, ethnic meals, we had some time to ourselves. We talked to each other about our thought on that day. The boys in our group stayed up till 3am one night sharing our biggest struggles we had back at home. I’ve learned more about each person in six days worth of time than I did for the entire duration of our friendship. In this I learned that God is not just working in the city but in us too. We, as a group, learned that many cities are much more deprived of hope than we thought and yet God is working there to bring hope to the people. We, as a group, learned that God is working in nations like the U.S because we need just as much gospel hope as any other countries of the world. And we, as a group, learned that God is working, not just in the homeless and needy, but within our team to bring us closer to each other.