Twenty-two youth, including 18 Portland Adventist Academy students, participated in a unique mission during spring break 2004 and visited the inner city of Portland to do "random acts of kindness.”

In keeping with a mission trip format, they stayed together at the Gladstone campground. During the day they distributed greeting cards, cleaned public toilets and held a drive to collect clothing and more than 1,000 pounds of food for Portland Adventist Community Services. They used their own funds to purchase additional food that they distributed directly to needy families. One day, they visited Dignity Village, a collection of makeshift shelters for some of Portland’s street people, where they discussed Christ with and befriended residents.

Other activities included helping a family with yard work, conducting a Vacation Bible School, distributing free sack lunches to the hungry and homeless, and assisting with a health clinic in the Adventist Medical Center’s health van.

This is the second year that this program, called Pipeline, has been a “pipeline through which God’s blessings could flow.”

The Pipeline mission demonstrates that a person doesn’t have to travel thousands of miles and cross international borders to minister to those God has declared our neighbors.

As the ministry to the inner city was ending and the students were riding back to the campground, one expressed a desire to prolong the personal reward of providing help in Christ’s name. Just at that time, the group encountered a stalled car. The youth stopped and found a young mother stranded when her car quit. The Pipeline youth managed to get the car out of active traffic, called and paid for a tow truck, and then took the driver to her destination—all in the spirit of random acts of kindness.