In the fall of 2011 my friend Bryan and I began a six week journey through our church called The Strong Challenge. Even though I was 170 miles away at college for the majority of the challenge I managed to watch all of the services online and meet as a small group with Bryan via Skype ever Thursday night. As part of the challenge we were asked to serve in a way which we hadn't ever served before. We decided on that particular night, as I waited on my laundry in the dryer of Lincoln Hall and he put off homework at his house in Clifton, that as soon as I got home we would go to a fast food restaurant, buy a ton of burgers, and give them out to homeless people in downtown Cincinnati. And so, on the day before Thanksgiving I picked Bryan up and we parked my mom's car at Fountain Square. We walked six blocks to the nearest Wendy's and bought 25 cheeseburgers. Over the course of the next four hours we traversed probably a hundred blocks of the city and gave away every single one of the burgers to people in need. Each one was extremely grateful and was amazed that two teenage boys had taken it upon themselves to do such a thing. It wasn't all happiness and cheerful service though. At the start of the third hour we still had a dozen cheeseburgers left and had struck out with nearly all of the last 20 people we'd offered them to. I could tell Bryan was starting to loose his optimism about the project (something that he almost never does). We talked to keep our minds off of the possibility that we would have to waste almost half of the food. I know I was silently praying we'd find some hungry people around each corner, and I'm pretty sure he was too. I was about to say something about maybe biting off more than we could chew (no pun intended) when the fourth hour came along and we started giving away burgers like crazy. After Bryan handed the last three burgers to a group of fairly cold, sad looking men I could see his face brighten and I felt a smile creep across mine. He threw away the bag and we walked a little ways before he said "Thanks for doing this with me." I thanked him as well and we discussed the effects the Challenge as a whole had had on us as we walked back to the car. I had never felt better about an afternoon than I did about that one. There's just something about helping people who really need it, simply because you want to. When we sat down on his couch that afternoon to play some video games and rest our feet I don't think we stopped smiling wordlessly for hours.
