Friday, March 10th

All four of our vans made it safely back to Menlo Park. There were a couple rainy patches, but other than that no trouble on the road. Some of the storm clouds made a beautiful heart in the sky!
We had a great time being down in L.A. and hope that all your kids did too! Thanks for spending your Spring Break serving, learning, and sharing Jesus with the people of Los Angeles. Have a fun and relaxing rest of the weekend and Easter!

Remember that we're having a ZOOM Reunion at Rock on Sunday, May 3rd at 11am in Fellowship Hall. Parents are invited!

See you all at the reunion, or at ROCK on Sunday, April 19th, or at ZOO on Tuesday, April 21st!
-Eleanor, Janet, Jason, Juice, Scott and Tim

PS: Sorry for any confusion about when we were coming back home! The blog posts are titled with the day that they are written about, and not necessarily the day they were posted.

Teams 1 and 3 eating lunch after serving at the Midnight MissionTeam 2 taking some time off in Chinatown

End of the week debrief after dinner in Little Tokyo

Thursday, April 9th

Jenna Swartz: Team 3
So yesterday, Thursday, was a bundle of fun. First, we drove to this place called Lighthouse community church to sort food. However, as soon as we arrived the person told us that they were not expecting us and didn't have anything for us to do. Then, we were like "well........what do we do now?" Well, I will tell you what we did. Our leader Chris gave us a challenge called.........CITY SEARCH!!!! WOOT WOOT!!!!!!! So, Group 3(my group) split up into two subgroups and received lanyards with challenges on them. I'll just give you an example: One card said to find out how far the "Red Line Metro" ran out of downtown L.A. and how much it would cost to ride it. Well, I took the challenge and boarded one of those shiny red buses, not at all knowing that an angry bus driver sat 3 feet in front of me. So I asked him my questions, and he responded "WHAT!!!???" I was a bit hurt but I proceeded to ask him again, and he answered me very rudely, "It goes to Hollywood and it's $1.50! Okay!!!!!!???" I replied, "Okay, thank you sir," and ran off the bus like a scared little mouse. Oh yeah another challenge was talking to a homeless man, and we talked to this guy named Dan who was super cool.

Then, we had lunch and a break and all that fun stuff. After that peaceful chill time, we drove(while listening to some sweet tunes) to a Salvation Army after school program for children. Everyone met a kid or two who they became close to in just a few hours. I hung out with this girl named Melissa most of the time. She was just ah-dorable and I called her "monkey" because she would climb on everything, including me. Also, I helped dress about a thousand (give or take a couple) Hannah Montanas for a game on Disney Channel.com with many of the girls. After computer class, I chased about ten girls up and down the hallways, but then we had to depart (boo hoo...it was so sad). I will miss those little chillun'.

That night, we went to a Japanese restaurant, and ate an all you can eat buffet. It was delicious. We thought it would be funny to play a little prank on Katie Woods, so we poured wasabi in her drink when she wasn't looking. She continued to drink half of it before saying, "Does this have a funny aftertaste???" then we all laughed. After we finished, we told her what we did. She got mad at us (:

We're heading into the vans right now to start our drive home. Pray for our safe travel! We'll upload some more pictures from the weekend when we're back in Menlo Park. Our estimated time of arrival is 6pm... but please call our information hotline at 650.330.7531 for the most up to date information.

See you soon!
-The Zoom Team

Wednesday, April 8th

Hello my devoted blog followers! You may bask in my glow!

The weather in LA changes as much as the traffic conditions; we woke up to a beautiful dry day, in contrast from last night's rain. Our group, lead by Jason Wilkinson and Janet Perez walked to the Metro Station and rode to Long Beach. Upon our arrival, we walked to our mission site, only to find that we weren't scheduled to be there! We rode back to our housing site and soon departed to the Midnight Mission, the same place we served at yesterday. There, we met up with/posed as the other group and helped serve lunch. I personally helped Jason and Chase Connell clean dishes, and got very, very dirty.

Next we went to the Salvation Army - Harbor Light, where we led a church service. Jono Simonian played drums, Jason played guitar, and I played piano. We also gave a short skit that summarized the Crucifixion. For dinner, the leaders gave us a great surprise! We went to Roscoe's Chicken and Waffle, which is a sanctuary of soul food/amazingness. Many of the kids bought shirts, as a sign of deliciousness.

Instead of going back to go to bed we headed up to Griffith Park. We had a great view of the Hollywood sign and the lights of the city. I ran into the street, and ran into Beto (from High School staff at MPPC)! Along with him was the entire High School Mission Team! He was very surprised, and everyone mingled in the middle of the parking lot. Hanna and Haley Bergerren had a teary embrace. Other siblings also met, but with less passion.

The tuckered out (that one's for you D-Lig) kids climbed into the vans and rocked home to music from Wicked and Rent. So far God has been helping people learn to "Roll With It", with changing schedules and unexpected happenings.

We are looking forward tomorrow to the Thursday CD and almost sleeping in.

- Written by Tom "T-Lig" Liggett: Team 3

(click any of the pictures for a larger image!)

Tuesday, April 7th

Dear parents, friends... and/or bloggers....

We're here in the wonderful SoCal... not so sunny... it actually rained... =)

Today was our first day waking up to the beautiful sound of trains passing and dogs yipping... some of us had to wake up earlier than others (make that 5:30 in the AM to be exact), but it was worth it because it was serving Jesus Christ!!! Our team is split up into three groups, as most of you know, mine personally had quite an eventful day. After we had breakfast and made our lunches, we got on the road and listened to some JoBros and gospel. We arrived at the Los Angeles Food Bank and unboxed, cleaned, checked expiration dates, and reboxed a plethera of foods. Then, our tummies were-a-rumbling, so we went to a park to eat our lunches. We took some time to complete devotions from the incredible verse: Isaiah 58. Throughout the week we are focusing on injustice, unfairness, and poverty. We enjoyed some free-time by spending it laying out under the sun, exploring the park, and playing catch phrase. Then we got back into the vans and headed to South LA's Salvation Army, which served as an after-school program for children. We helped make bunny-ears, played basketball, double-dutched, skateboarded, painted, went on the Disney-Channel website and rocked out to Hannah Montana, and mostly loved hanging out with the kids. We had dinner at Natural Soul Food, which is actually a non-profit organization that helps focus people on their health. The host to the restaurant was an interesting fellow, who had much to tell us. We are now back at the housing site chilling, but now have to go to bed... we are all quite tired... ADIOS!!!

-Hanna Berggren and the rest of the ZOOM team!

Monday, April 6th

Good morning parents and friends! All four of our vans arrived safely in L.A. last night. Thanks for your prayers for safe travel. When we got to our housing site, we enjoyed a dinner of Indian food. After that we split into our three teams and drove around the city on a prayer tour. We learned about the neighborhood where we're staying, drove through Skid Row, and saw downtown Los Angeles. Here's an account of the night from one of our students:

Jack Ferguson: Team 2 We have a team mascot. He is a bunny named San Pablo. On a more serious note, the prayer tour we went on was cool in a kind of moving way. I prayed for a couple people and at the end our leader had us lay on the ground of an L.A. parking lot, and just sort of think (not as bad as it seem). Then we shared what (if we had to pick one) what our snapshot for the whole prayer trip was. Mine was when we were at the school and were looking over the empty buildings (that used to be sweat shops and prostitute homes) at the city.



This morning we all woke up and got ready for our day (One team was up at 5:30!). Most of us slept well and are ready for a great day of ministry! Ashley Simons said that our housing site is "stuffy, but fun!" We're being flexible!

Thanks for your continued prayers! The whole group says "hi"!
-The Zoom Team

Team Photo

We've had two team trainings and now we're ready to go! Please continue to pray for all the students and leaders going on the trip.

We leave Monday, April 6th. Be at the D-Building (1111 University Dr.) at 9am, packed and ready to go! CLICK HERE to download the packing list.
*Pay close attention to the dress code and remember 5 small gifts for your Secret Buddy!

See you Monday morning!
-M3 Staff