A big thank you to Marina Del Ray Double Tree by Hilton for providing the whole team with luxurious accommodation, we are all deeply grateful!
Our first stop of the day in Los Angeles was to offer the Torch Bearer Award to Bishop Joshua Smith at The Word of God Outreach Centre. Bishop Smith is pictured here with his wife, Sherrie, who is a passionate Evangelist. Bishop Smith spoke to us about his work and we were very inspired by his sincere devotion to serving the people of his community in many different ways.
Bishop Smith is a licensed, ordained minister, holistic wellness practitioner, and educator with a focus on Biblical-based service leadership and life empowerment training for professional educators.
Founder of United National Initiative for Quality Urban Education (U.N.I.Q.U.E.) Encouraging Parental Rights, Responsibility, and Respect. UNIQUE supports the notion of equal access to quality education for children, the right of parents to send children to their school of choice instead of being told where to go, providing before and after school programs to keep kids off the streets and into a safe environment.
The Word of God International University & Holistic Wellness Center- Ministry training for certification of Service Leadership degrees. He even offers Biblical Naturopathic Wellness services!
He also works with Kenyan officials to promote higher education and learning opportunities for those living in Kenya. He is helping implement business development plans and strategies throughout the country, building relationships with North American companies looking to expand, as well as with government agencies to assist with international trade.
Thank you to everyone at the Word of God World Outreach Centre for all you are doing, and for your enthusiastic support of the Peace Run!
Next we ran a few miles through the streets of Los Angeles to our next ceremony. Here the team is led by Odgiiv from Mongolia.
Odgiiv is in Los Angeles visiting his family, so we were so happy he could join us.
While we were running to our next ceremony, some other members of our team went down to Huntington Beach to meet with Mayor Jim Katapodis. He very kindly offered us a proclamation.
This picture is of the team with Mayor Katapodis at the Peace Pole in the City Hall. Pictured holding the torch with the mayor is Santiva Morrison, who organised some of the days events.
Meanwhile, the rest of the team had arrived at our next ceremony at Project Angel Food.
Project Angel Food deliver 1200 meals a day to people around Los Angeles who are too sick to cook for themselves. The foundation is largely run by volunteers and this year celebrated delivering its ten millionth meal! We were deeply inspired by the dedication, love and care of everyone involved. The love they put in each meal nourishes and sustains those they seek to serve.
We were thrilled to be given a tour of the premises. Pictured here are birthday bags which are personally delivered to each client on their birthday. The bags are decorated by local children.
Preparing for the tour...
No comment needed...
This man is the oldest volunteer, he is 86 years old and we were thrilled to meet with him! Here you can see he is packing the meals.
Unbelievably, there are 37 different kinds of meals provided to cater for the many dietary requirements of the clients!
This man is one of the chefs.
We offered our Torch-Bearer award to the three wonderful people pictured from left to right, Richard Ayoub, the Current Executive Director, who is working on moving the project into the future and continuing the mission of Project Angel Food.
In the centre is Susan West, a volunteer extraordinaire! She is responsible for the client birthday bags. She collects items and puts them together for every client- around 60 every week!
On the right is David Kessler. David is one of the original founding member of Project Angel Food Program, which began in 1989. He is currently serving as member of the board of trustees and also the ambassador council. David's enthusiasm and goodness radiates from within and infuses the work of everyone there.
Thank you David, Susan, and Richard for your incredible dedication to such a great and essential cause!
We offered one of Sri Chinmoy's Jharna Kala artworks to Richard on behalf of Project Angel Food.
A quick visit into the biggest freezer we have ever been in! This freezer holds enough back up meals to feed all the clients for a week, so if an earthquake or any kind of disaster occurs, no one will go hungry! They have not missed a day of meal deliveries since they began in 1989!
This volunteer is a film maker, and he kindly filmed our visit for their website. Here he is interviewing our Columbian representative, Jorge, who works at an organic restaurant in Manhattan.
This super cool bus is used for selling cookies and raising funds for the organisation.
Time to keep running to our next appointment...
Meeting peace lovers along the way...
Our next meeting was with Mayor Lauren Meister of West Hollywood. Mayor Meister has been dedicated to serving her local community for the last 25 years, and we were most grateful that she took time out of her busy schedule to meet with us.
Mayor Meister presented us with a beautiful Peace Day Proclamation.
We presented her with a print of Sri Chinmoy's Artwork entitled "World Harmony".
Our final stop in Los Angeles was to meet with Kashif and offer him our Torch-Bearer Award. Kashif Saleem is a six time Grammy nominated music producer, singer, songwriter, artist, director. He is well known for his records performed by Whitney Houston, Kenny G, Dionne Warwick, George Benson, Evelyn “Champagne” King, and many others. He is also the founder of the Kashif University for foster children. He started the Kashif University to provide academic and arts training programs for at risk foster children. The goal of the program is to help develop skills in language, arts, math, piano, voice, guitar, bass, drums, DJ, fashion design, and to provide a loving and consistent environment where the foster children can become successful citizens of the world. Kashif himself was a foster child so he understands the plight these children go through.
We were thrilled that Kashif even took a few steps for Peace with us. He is a truly inspiring person who is whole-heartedly using his God given gifts to make the world a better place. Thank you so much, Kashif, for sharing some time with us.
A final shot with Kashif and our team before leaving Los Angeles. All our gratitude to Utpara, Eric, Dianne, Santiva and others for coordinating such inspiring events in Los Angeles. We were deeply honored and blessed to meet with such good people in the name of Peace.
World-peace entirely depends
On our inner hunger
And outer service.
-Sri Chinmoy
