Stirrings Inside My Head: Serve the City...

Serve the City is showing kindness in practical ways to people in need. For the week of Serve the City there were 30 different projects to sign up with. Some of the projects included working with elderly, children, refugees, women, or doing practical work (painting, etc) at different places. The 6 of us signed up for Kamikaze Kindness, the project that sent us wandering the streets of Brussels looking for ways to spread love and hope through the city.

We did a wide variety of things throughout the city! The first serving day the dance team from South Africa traveled with us. They would do their dance to draw a crowd. Here is a video of them at the Skate Park we went to clean up and talk to kids.

We gave out free hugs to anyone and everyone! We walked around the city holding signs saying "Calins Grantuit" (which means free hugs) and would walk up to people and give them hugs.

One of the kids at the Skate Park grabbed the "Free Hugs" sign from Trevin and started going around to girls to get hugs from them. Trevin took the sign back but told the kid that he could make his own sign. Our paths crossed with those kids 3 times that day, and they had made their own Free Hugs sign and were giving free hugs to strangers just as we were!!

Twice we went to the train station for part of the day and waited for trains arriving from Paris and London and welcomed them to Brussels! It was a lot of fun yelling "Welcome to Brussels!" as they walked through to door and give people hugs. It brought many smiles to people's faces. I had one woman say to me "You don't know how much I need this hug right now." That made it so worth it!

While I was waiting for the rest of our group I was able to help a mom who was trying to control her kids while waiting for someone. Her kids weren't listening to her and running around everywhere, so I pulled out some bubbles that I had in my bag and started blowing them. The kids immediately turned and started playing with them. The mom looked and my and said "Merci! Merci! Merci!!" Its fun the little things that we can do that mean so much to people!

Cleaning was a big part of our serving. We carried trash bags and brooms with us wherever we went and cleaned anywhere we saw needed it. Chad was excellent with his cleaning skills! Friday, the last serving day, someone stumbled across an alleyway behind an apartment building that was FILLED with trash. It looked like a landfill. We spent the entire day on Friday cleaning up the alleyway and someone called the city to have them come and haul away what we put together. As we were leaving Carlton shared that they want to try to plant a garden where all the trash used to be.

Here's a video of the alley with Trevin's narration...