For the past couple of years, students a part of the University Christian Church youth group have taken mission trips over spring break, going to various locations. This year they went to Memphis, Tenn.

While they were there, they helped out Community Bible Church  by doing various projects in the area, such as gardening, cleaning up water and working at the Habitat for Humanity Restore.

Unlike previous trips, this one was to an inner city. The difference caught some of the students by surprise.

“This mission trip involved a lot more service activities rather than directly interacting with people,” junior Hannah Park said. “The inner city is very different because typically all of the housing that we were around was a lot more poor or rundown than we are used to. The majority of the people there are talkative and since it’s kind of in the south there. They really, really like to talk to random strangers. It got you out of your comfort zone for sure.”

“The first day we just went to church [at CBC], we hung out and did some touring,” Park said. “Then, Monday we went to a homeless shelter. So we went and helped serve food for the homeless people, and then we went [and] spent a few hours in the basement of the church. We were vacuuming up water, mopping and stuff because there was so much rain …  Then, the second day we went to Habitat for Humanity, and we spent all day there. We were paint sorting, and doing all kinds of stuff. Habitat for Humanity is kind of like Goodwill, in a way, it gets clothes and furniture, and sells them for really cheap to people who need them.”

The majority of the trip was working in the various gardens in the area.

“It was like three days straight that we were in the garden all day,” Park said. “We spent like eight hours in a garden everyday.”

In each garden, the students helped pull weeds and clean up.

“One of the gardens we just took a lot of weeds out of their plant beds, and we planted a few flowers,” sophomore Hannah Grace said. “Then another garden we spread organic fertilizer over the beds. Then we planted other food, we cleaned up and we made a sign [with the name of the garden on it.]”

While the students were in the garden they got to play with some snakes.

“[I] played with snakes,” senior Nathan Harden said. “[It was] scary … because I don’t like snakes. But snakes are okay I guess.”

The Habitat for Humanity store was eye opening for the students.

“[The restore] was disorganized, but it was big, and there were a lot of things,” Grace said. “Once it was open and we saw all the people buying stuff, it was kind of like ‘wow, these people don’t have a lot of money.’ I didn’t realize how many people there were like that.”

The students did various jobs to help the workers at the Habitat for Humanity Restore.

“We just did odd jobs around the store; I unloaded a trailer,” Harden said. “[The trailer] was furniture, and it helped the store because if we didn’t do it then they had to do it.”

The trip allowed for students to realize that there is more out there than they know.