Buses & Mounds

A couple of weekends ago, March 11 & 12, I drove down to Belleville, IL to attend a conference on the changing faces of poverty. It was hosted by the Illinois Council of Churches and held at the St Mary of the Snows Shrine. It was an excellent conference - learned a lot and met some great people. I was especially impressed by the bus ministry conducted by one of the local local Roman Catholic groups (St VIncent DePaul, I think). The idea was to retrofit a couple of school buses into traveling soup kitchens. They drive into the poor neighborhoods of East St Louis and Belleville and serve meals to those who show up - lots of children. The bus can seat 24 people at a time and an average of 80 people are served each day. I believe that this model could be duplicated in many communities for not only serving meals, but to provide tutoring and other services.



During one of the breaks, we went out to the parking lot and were served a snack.



Stove in back of bus.

Tables and seats are built into sides of bus.

The sink is up to health code requirements.


Then on the way  back I stopped in Collinsville at the Cahokia Mounds State Park for about a half hour.Wow! There's a great historical museum and then one can tour the many scores of mounds here. It's about 15 minutes from St. Louis and well worth visiting. I want to return when I can spend more time.

Front of the Cahokia Mounds museum.

One of the larger mounds. there is a pathway & stairs to the top of the mound.