The young people loading food into the trunks of Kansas City families’ cars had traveled a long way.
Their spiritual journey from Flint, Mich, arranged through the mission organization Youthfront in Kansas City, Kan., brought them to the expansive weekly Wednesday morning food distribution that the Morning Star Youth and Family Life Center provides hundreds of families and individuals at the corner of 27th and Prospect on Kansas City, Mo.’s, east side.
Youthfront aims to help young people from all parts of the United States learn compassion by providing opportunities to walk “in somebody else’s shoes,” said Nibimenya Nadine, the volunteer coordinator for Youthfront.
This particular group of children came from the Central Church of the Nazarene in Flint, and they took part in a full week of volunteer opportunities at several community services outlets in the Kansas City area.
At Morning Star, they witnessed the long line of cars that queue up well before the start of the weekly distribution, as well as the line of people from the neighborhood gathering at the walkup line with bags and wheeled carts, all seeking some help to make it through the next week.
“We came in to help and also to learn,” said one of the Flint group’s youth leaders. “And to be more culturally aware, and to learn how you guys are serving your community so that maybe we can go back and do the same.”
LINC and Morning Star enjoyed the visitors, was thankful for their help and happy to share service ideas.
“We have a lot of volunteers, but rarely people from out of town,” said LINC Caring Communities Coordinator Drake Bushnell. “It was special having a group of young people from an entire different community come to help.”
The neighborhood mission work is a piece of a wide ranging menu of services Youthfront offers volunteers, Nadine said. The group from Flint also helped at Jewish Vocational Services’ program for refugees in Kansas City, Mo., and at New Roots’ local farming training program, among other visits during the week.
“We help with food distribution, clothes closets, cleaning yards — whatever people need,” Nadine said. “It’s a spiritual mission.”
