Valentines Day @ Camp Hope

Camp Hope (aka Tent City) in Ontario is a big dirt lot that has 300+ homeless people living in tents. My church here, CrossPoint CRC, just started going and serving dinner at Camp Hope every Thursday night. This past week some of us here at PCC made 200+ cupcakes for Valentine’s Day. Jo Ann, the lady that is in charge of food here at PCC, Rachel, Megs, Kristen, Kim, Jesse, and I went to Camp Hope last night to drop off the cupcakes. We ended up staying to help serve dinner because they were short volunteers for the night. This was such an amazing opportunity. We set up tables just on the sidewalk and right away people started to line up for food. All of the people that went through the line were extremely grateful for the food. I was in charge of handing out the cupcakes that we made. I was handed them out to each person I smiled and said Happy Valentine’s Day. Some people responded with a thank you, some with a Happy Valentine’s Day, some with a smile, and some looked down at the cupcakes and then looked up at me and had the biggest smiles on their faces. One man walked through and immediately stopped when he got to the cupcakes. He stood there starring at down at the cupcakes. After a few moments her looked up and made eye contact with me. This man had tears streaming down his face. He said to me, “I really have no idea why cupcakes are making me cry. I feel so stupid. I am just so very grateful for your generosity.” I responded with telling him that he didn’t need to feel stupid and handed him a cupcake and told him to have a Happy Valentine’s Day. He said thank you and then moved on in the line. Some of these people had such a love for Jesus Christ. The way that they wanted to talk to us about our faith was so amazing. Another man came through and apologized that he didn’t have any money because he said that he wished that you could have gotten all of us girls a rose. We all smiled and laughed and said that it was okay. It was awesome to see a bunch of grown men and women get excited about something as small as a cupcake. It goes to show that we are so blessed to have clothes, a house to live in, and food to eat.