a seed, a dollar, a mission

It started out the smallest of all seeds. Who knows when it was planted. However, as this seed grew in the heart of one man, it soon effected many. In the summer of 2004, a thought came to mind as two friends began to wonder, "What can we do to help those less privileged?" When Christmas of 04 was a few months away, we had formed a purpose: "Lets give those who have NOTHING, something." The next step was to think of HOW we can do this. Oddly enough, while working at local Starbucks we began to collect $1 from individual customers whom we shared our vision with. It was then that we figured out that one person = $1; two people = $2 and three people = $3. As time passed, more and more people listened and more and more people gave (as we made there "Grande, soy, 2 pump vanilla, no foam lattes"). The idea was, "Just give $1", no more, no less. Coming towards the holiday, we had a little over $100 dollars. It doesn't sound like much, however when we realized that each dollar represented one person, the small number became overwhelming. Our mission became even more blessed when a pastor at a local church heard about what we were doing and felt lead to help us. Thanks to Mark McKinney at Discovery Church, we doubled our money to over $200. All we had to do was accept the offer to double what we had collected, obviously with the exception of breaking the $1 only rule, which we were so strong on defending to show that it doesn't take much to help. With some careful shopping and the help of our fellow barista's : Salena(now apart of replycharis), Aurick, Nelson, and some old friends: Denica, Nicole and Michelle, we had a wrapping party and prayer @ our local Royal & Madera Starbucks. In the end, we had over 30 Gift bags containing; gloves, beanies, scarves, flash lights, batteries, homemade cookies, drinks, playing cards, food and lots more. To top it off, each bag had $1 inside to signify how something little can spark something huge. On December 17th, 2004, Jessi Tello, Mondo Scott and a friend Aurick, headed off to Santa Monica, where we gave people (the homeless community) an expression of love uncommon to our world. A simple gift of God. It wasn't much but it was everything to them! It was small but has inspired something bigger!

Since then, we have carried out two Mexico trips. One during December 05, where we gave over 100 toys away to kids and their families for Christmas. This was possible through the help of many people, who saved there aluminum cans and donated the proceeds. As a result many smiles were manifested.
The second trip was during Spring Break 06. We returned to the same people for one reason. On the first trip one of the men asked us if we had any blankets or warm clothes. He was a father of five and all he could think about was keeping them warm during the cold nights. So we made a promise that we would return and on April 8th we did. Thanks to many people's donations, we brought with us 8 huge, 50 gallon garbage bags of old and new clothes, as well as shoes & new blankets, which were all well received. After this trip, we decided to put a name and meaning to our new found mission. We decided to create r e p l y c h a r i s.

As we take further steps towards the future, we look forward with much anticipation to those in need.

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