And pulling weeds. And visiting the homeless.
It is a little known fact that we actually consider these singing and service tours, and this was the difference we made for the people of California today.
Personally, I've heard people raise many objections to this kind of service. Won't the litter just blow back tomorrow? Shouldn't the people of Oakland learn to take care of themselves? Can't the City hire people to look after these properties?
As I put on work gloves and began filling a garbage bag, the memories came flooding back. I served on a city council myself, once, and knew exactly why Council Member Gallo was so grateful for our help.
My entry into politics began exactly this way -- picking up litter. My family purchased its first home, a starter, in a run-down neighborhood, and I couldn't bear to raise my children in squalor. We began taking weekly litter walks after Family Home Evening and adopted a habit of carrying empty grocery bags in our pockets, just in case. Soon the neighbors began following our example, and it wasn't long before we were marching in litter brigades behind the Steel Days parade and organizing neighborhood clean-ups.
One of the yards we cleaned up belonged to a grateful WWII veteran who fell victim to PTSD. The last living member of a proud American Fork family, he was unable to care for the property by himself. When he died, our efforts attracted a premium buyer for the house, which became the successful Thai Village restaurant, which in turn attracted more investment to the neighborhood.
We learned that people can't always do for themselves, but that once the neighborhood learns a little pride, many positive investments follow. We learned that City taxes are usually hamstrung by federal regulations, and that there's never enough money to go around. Most importantly, we learned that when the neighborhood starts to invest a little sweat equity, a sense of community follows.
Usually it takes many efforts like today's to jump-start that effect.
What we saw in Oakland was worse than American Fork will ever know. We saw entire meals abandoned at the bus stop, and wondered what might drive someone to run from a meal. We saw families living in tents like it was a third-world country -- while looking across the bay at the nation's wealthiest elite in San Francisco.
And wherever we saw a City employee, we saw a grateful smile and a sincere "thank-you."
After eating lunch in beautiful Joaquin Miller Park, overlooking the city, we held a debriefing at the Oakland Temple Visitors' Center with Elder Crossley. Elder Crossley serves as the director of the Visitors' Center and also holds the distinction of being father to not one, but two fine American Heritage teachers, Ty and Heidi Crossley.
He asked what we had seen and felt, and took several heartening answers from the choir:
"It was an experience just to walk the streets of San Francisco, knowing I was a representative of Jesus Christ, and this helped me feel what it might be like to serve as a full-time missionary."
"It was interesting to meet so many good people here and to learn that they all have a spirit of Christ about them.""That's an interesting observation," Elder Crossley said, and proceeded to tell us about the Interfaith Council of Alameda County, which he hosts at the Visitors' Center every month. Its mission is to promote respect, understanding, and engagement among the many diverse faith traditions of the Bay Area, and to mobilize people to serve the community. Its number one goal is to eradicate homelessness.
He told us about the many thousands of people who live in the homeless communities, 6,000 in Oakland and 12,000 in San Francisco. He explained about extremes at both ends of a troubled spectrum, from mothers and fathers who have become financially overwhelmed to loners and drifters who have abused their bodies and minds. "It takes multiple solutions and multiple agencies," he said, "from religious to political, working together, to solve these problems."
After singing for the missionaries in the Oakland Temple Visitors' Center, we returned to our buses and crawled through rush hour traffic, arriving in Rohnert Park just in time to sing for the people of the San Rafael Stake.
From picking up litter in the morning to testifying of Christ at night, we learned a little better today what "pure religion and undefiled" is -- "to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep [ourselves] unspotted from the world" (James 1:27).
