A Trashy Weekend

So this weekend us interns were volunteered to volunteer at Bend's Summerfest. Summerfest is basically like any other outdoor summer event in Bend, OR which involves music, food carts and lots and lots of beer. We were working with C3 event company on a project they have called 'towards Zero waste' which means they're trying to get Bend to be more Portland-y and recycle and compost things. So I spent two 4 hour shifts collecting, sorting, picking up, and dumping out garbage, recyclying and compost items. Did you know they're starting to make cups an cutlery out of corn starch and sugar so that they're compostable? Well, now you do! We manned 'zero waste' stations that educated people who came to throw away their trash that, "Oh hey that can be recycled or composted! Yay you saving the environment!" I used one of those convict looking trash-picker-uppers that people use on the side of the road and walked around wearing this shirt that made people yell "GO GREEN TEAM!" mostly sarcastically I think, although some gave very genuine thanks.

As you can tell, my attitude about this trash-picking was not the best. It was gross and hot and not very intellectually stimulating. But I knew that I was doing it for God's glory and I knew that it would benefit Antioch's Christmas service later this year. Well, when I got back to my host-home after 20 somethings group at church, my host dad had some pretty awesome things to say about it. He quoted MLK Jr. which you can't really go wrong with. This is what MLK Jr. had to say:

“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”

Umm.. Hello! There's a wake up call! I can honestly say that I did my job well, but I'm really hoping that my heart was in the right place. It was very humbling for sure, and I'm so thankful there are people who do this everyday and take care of our trash and care about the planet enough to do so.. I want the hosts of heaven and earth to be like, wow those streets are CLEAN because some Antioch Interns worked really really hard to make them so.

THEN as if that wasn't enough, my host dad said then said that the Antioch Christmas Eve service that C3 will put on because of our work brings SO many people from the community in who will hear about Jesus for the first time. Through our efforts today picking up trash people will come to know JESUS over Christmas time :) Yes, that makes it all worth it.