Monday, the first day of Spring Break, a day of rest and recovery, a time to just take it easy! Unless you live at our house. I anticipated the night before what their grumpy reactions would be to having to be at the pantry at eight a.m. this morning. But when I got up this morning and made it into the living room there were all three kids dressed in their Metro Relief shirts and ready to go. I didn't have to tell them we were going, they knew that's where we would spend our day and it is where they wanted to spend their day.
I was working on statistics the other day for the pantry and for 2015 Abigail has volunteered 76 days at the pantry for 298 hours of service, Frankie 31 days for 98 hours of service and Caleb volunteered 36 days for 125 hours of service. And for posterity sake, I'll go ahead and report here that I volunteered 124 outreach days for 383 hours of service.
Metro's volunteers served a total of 6,365 hours of service in the 458 outreaches and the majority of those hour were served by the same twenty people. There were 20 individuals who served 50 or more outreaches and close to 85 volunteers with 20 or less outreaches. The consistency in the volunteers makes a huge different to our guest, but it is understandable that not everyone has a heart for serving the poor.
Sometimes I think people view serving in a food pantry as listening to hard luck stories and there are plenty of those; but there are also opportunities to make friends and to share the gospel. Many times the work is praying and listening but other days it is unloading a truck, sweeping the floor and changing out toilet paper rolls. There are jobs for anyone who wants to serve!
Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love
and his wonderful deeds for mankind,
9
for he satisfies the thirsty
and fills the hungry with good things.
Psalm 107:8-9
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