A group of soccer-playing girls recently returned to the US from a trip to South Africa. What did they most want to talk about upon their return?
What they wanted to talk about most was not the elephant herd that surrounded their bus or the lion cubs they held. It was handing out 1,000 hot dogs to squatters’ families, joining dozens of little boys in a field to kick around a rubber ball the size of a walnut, and sharing secrets with African girls their age. They had caught glimpses of what was really important in life, and they knew it, even if they didn’t know what to do with what they had learned.
The parish of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Poolesville, Maryland is mentioned:
Their favorite place was Richmond, a dusty speck of a town with high unemployment between coastal Port Elizabeth and huge Johannesburg. Under the umbrella of a program started two years ago by St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Poolesville, the girls stayed two days to deliver food and play with local kids. Joanna Meyer-Glitzenstein, 16, recalled riding into the town and thinking, “Oh, my God, there’s nothing here. The streets are empty. Where are all the people?”
She didn’t have to wait long to find out.
Read more about outreach at St. Peter’s here.
Read the entire Washington Post article here where you will also find links to blog entries written by the team members, and interviews with them.