HYC Honolulu: Kaleigh Sunderlin

I am so grateful that I had the amazing opportunity to serve at HYC Hawaii. I was excited to go to Hawaii because I’ve never been and I was excited for the opportunity to serve.

The service opportunity that affected me the most was feeding the homeless at a beach. It was so humbling to see how when we offered them lots of free food but they would only take a small portion. I said “You can have more food. We have plenty.” and then they would say they had more than enough! Then they all thanked us and said, “God bless you.” It was just so crazy to see that our giving them leftover food was so special to them. We have so much that we take for granted. Most of us just eat from our pantry whenever we want! We have houses, beds, food, clean clothes and we are still consumed with materialistic things. I have so much and I seem to always want more. To see that these people have so little and are content with what they have is so convicting.

Another project that really got to my heart was serving the kids at the Waimanalo Shelter. We played with the kids for a couple of days. The last day when we dropped our little mentees off at their houses and many of them were crying saying how much they loved us and would miss us! It broke my heart! We only spent a little bit of our time with them and yet it made a huge impact on them! Some kids said it was the best day of their lives. That was just crazy to hear. They just wanted someone to spend time with them. I was holding a 2 year old boy and I was going to set him back down but he put his arms around my neck and wouldn’t let me go. He rested his little head on my shoulder. He just wanted to be held. I had to hold in my tears. Not only did we have an impact on the kids, but they had an impact on us.

Through this experience I learned that, before coming, I wasn’t truly loving. I was just doing what I was supposed to do. I have learned what it means to love & serve with all my heart. Not just because I have to or because it’s a nice thing to do, but because I want to glorify God and make a difference in the people’s lives around me. I want to continue to grow in my love towards others and strive to love like Jesus did.