Bay Area Seva
The greatest impact for the devotees following Bhagawan’s words and doing selfless Seva is the love that they experience while seeing and serving everyone! The youth have been serving in the homeless community and meeting people in the encampments, thereby building a relationship with them. The youth are stationed in one area while serving hot, fresh, nutritious food, so that they can talk to the people they serve. After many days of such relationship building,a bond has developed very naturally. On some occasions, people have opened up to the volunteers and poured their heart out.
There were many beautiful, sensitive stories that were shared and the homeless people felt relieved after sharing such stories that have affected their hearts so much. One time, a homeless lady shared with the volunteers how she had excessive bleeding post her abortion and how she had to consult the gynecologist regularly, one person shared how he was swindled by his ex-girlfriend, and many such stories. After the connection is made, the volunteers also try to help by building resumes for the homeless people and encouraging them to apply for jobs.
Right from driving the homeless people to nearby places to building resumes and setting up interviews for them; sharing clothes so that they are presentable and providing guidance on proper behavior, the Sai youth are helping the homeless people in becoming responsible citizens!
Recently one Sai youth met a 36-year old, homeless person who moved from Southern California in search of a job and was found wandering in the streets of the Bay Area. After giving him food, the Sai youth maintained contact with this homeless person for a few days and invited him to have coffee. There, the Sai youth had taken a laptop to type a resume for the homeless friend.As they made friendly conversation,the homeless person opened up and shared how difficult his life became after he threw away his life by investing in a business that failed drastically several years ago and how he has tosteal sometimes to get a decent dinner. Obviously from a rational perspective, the public may tend to judge that a thief deserves to be in jail, but the detailed conversation of the homeless, wandering person melted the Sai youth’s heart.
Such detailed tragic stories will melt any human being; but the Sai youth, aspiring to be an ideal Sai student spoke to the homeless friend, calmed him down and started working towards reconstructing his life by taking the first step of sending resumes and getting him the right information for staying, getting an ID and so on. There are many such stories as the Sai Ashraya team serves food regularly in these regions.
Volunteer helping homeless person to move his stuff
One day, a Sai youth saw that someone had made excess food and had taken the food down to the encampment and left it open and dry and had left the scene. It was not known if it was an after-party food or restaurant food but they had just left loads of food in the open, right on the side of the road where these camps are. When the homeless community saw these vast open plates of food left for hours together, they felt very ashamed that someone would really treat these homeless people as unsophisticated animals. The homeless friends were venting this out to the Sai youth who had come to distribute hot, fresh, packed food. The homeless friends were praising the Sai Ashraya team as wonderful beings who not only gave food, but they gave love through this food. Food that heals them and tells them that they are being loved, as compared to the food thrown on the streets by some people who assume that these homeless people are uncouth animals.
There are many such stories that the Sai youth experience everyday as they continue to serve the homeless people with love and joy, ushering the golden age of Bhagawan. Who else but Bhagawan can bring about such a transformation in the youth across the world and who then bring transformation to the whole world by serving as true instruments of the Lord? As one Sai Ashraya youth would say, lucky are the ones who have come under the wings of Bhagawan, for not only are they touched but they are also transformed permanently!