weekend update.

To recap the last few days when we have not had internet to keep you up to date on our lives…

Friday morning – we left SunRiver, OR and after an 8 hour drive south, we ended up near the Bay Area where we took a tour at the Jelly Belly Factory. We learned about the history and the development of the bean along with sampling many flavors. We ate a delicious dinner at Claim Jumper and retired for the night at the Concord Hilton. We had a great evening discussion about our fear of death and where our hope in eternal life and desires of leaving a legacy fits within that context.

Saturday – We drove to San Francisco in the morning after eating in the parking lot. We started off with checking out the Golden Gate Bridge where we walked across the bridge and got some sweet pictures together. We then headed down to Pier 39 with the rest of the tourists in San Francisco where we saw the seals, the cotton candy stands, and many over priced souvenir shops. We pretty much saw the whole city as we drove through many neighborhoods. We partnered with Miraloma Community Church to serve dinner to about 75 homeless friends. Passing out socks was really appreciated by the attendees. In order to not cause those at dinner to get angry about seconds, we had to make an ethical decision. Do we only give out an extra piece of pizza to the first 35 people who made it up to the serving table, do we just ignore that we don’t have enough seconds for everyone (and everyone wanted more pizza), do we order more pizza even though it would take about 40 minutes for it to arrive…I mean we all thought 35 pizzas would be enough… or our last choice, do we as the volunteers also eat some pizza so then we “run out” of pizza for those who had not eaten much food that day. The pastor at the church asked us all to eat some pizza so we could just say “oh Sorry, we ran out.” Our kids really had a hard time eating the pizza. They didn’t want to eat it. They didn’t want to take away from those who were truly hungry. It was a hard ethical decision that as a group, they had to deal with… and get through. We had Pakistani wraps for our own dinner, followed by a trip to Ghirardelli square and a look out from Coit tower. We slept at Miraloma Community Church.

Sunday – We got to experience a super multi-cultural worship service at Glide United Methodist Church that is located in the Tenderloin district in the heart of the city. People from ALL walks of life were there. They do an amazing job of loving their community they live in and the people that represent their neighborhood. Afterwards, we got to see the Diamondbacks destroy the San Francisco Giants. (Eatons, we thought you would enjoy that). We hit up Chinatown for dinner and it took us about an hour just to get out of traffic. Tonight we are Liam’s house that he grew up in near Santa Cruz.

Pictures up later tonight.