8/20/20
Let me tell you about Alfred.
He just loves people well.
His dream is to make your dream come true.
He is a friend of our hosts in Utah, so they connected us to do ministry with Alfred. He has a lot of different churches he helps with ministries they wanted to start. His perspective is that he has the resources and you have the dream, so let’s bring those together.
The two days we worked with him the needs were sorting clothes for future clothes drives and setting up food for drive through food drives in 2 church parking lots.
He shared with us that is has been difficult to keep all of these ministries going in the time of Covid. Other groups that might have come to help had to cancel. That made us a huge blessing.
But what really touched me about Alfred was that his real passion truly was ministering to us. He wanted to make our dreams come true for our time in Utah. Work, sorting clothes, food drives came secondary to his being in the moment with us.
I’m not sure exactly how it came up, but he shared with us that many movies are filmed in Utah. He saw our faces light up as we talked about how close by was the high school where High School Musical was filmed and the lot where the Sandlot was filmed.
He wanted to spend a morning taking us to those places.
So the second day we were scheduled to work with him, that’s exactly what he did. We met him at the fast food joint next to the old sandlot. We got to play whiffle ball and run the bases. I saw signs advertising gatherings that took place at the 20th and 25th anniversaries of the movie. It’s hard to believe it’s been that long. And he bought us ice cream and fried appetizers to go with our lunch.
He also had a specific park chosen where he wanted to take us for lunch. You see the park was called the International Garden of Peace. And the story of this park is that it is located in a really bad part of town, a part of town where crime and murder are normal parts of life. But this park was founded as a safe place. And it is beautiful. It is divided into little areas of many different countries in the world and the things in each country’s garden were actually donated by the country. I greatly enjoyed walking through Japan and Greece and Spain and Korea. It was worth the walk. And I never felt unsafe. I never would have guessed the story of the park, which wasn’t told to us until after we experienced it.
You see, what is beautiful is this park has been what it was meant to be. It has been a symbol of peace. There is darkness all around in the neighborhood and the other sections of the bigger park itself, but in the Garden of Peace there has been no crime. Parents know it is safe there. They can bring their children there to play. They can have family time and rest.
The community chooses to make it that way. The gangs choose to make it that way. The people choose to make it that way.
And that moves me. I have never heard such a story. I think it’s beautiful.
And after we finished lunch we went to East High! Sadly, we could only be outside and see through windows. A movie was filmed there, but it is still a functioning school getting ready for a new school year in the weirdness that is 2020. It’s sad that Covid got in our way, but it was still a wonderful experience to have.
And then we set up a food and clothing drive.
Alfred’s example was impactful to me. He didn’t worry about work as much as he worried about loving us in the moment. Some of my squad mates absolutely love High School Musical. It was an obsession even before we found out we could go there. For me, the experience was seeing what it meant to them. And I learned from seeing Alfred in action that being in the moment and loving who you’re with is what truly matters most. Planning can only get you so far because plans change and some things never work out, but right now is a perfect time to just be in the moment and loving others and yourself.
Let the work worry about itself. Focus on loving people. As my teammate Kellie would say: “Love everyone always.”
