This is a gigantic undertaking with donations exceeding thousands of food items. And each one had to be sorted and organized into three lines for packaging into paper bags that would later be delivered to needy families in the area. Since they never knew when a donation would arrive or what people would be bringing, lines might temporarily shut down waiting for a particular item, and workers would get shifted to another line to help out. My wife was awesome at always finding a place to serve and be useful. She’d bounce from station to station, lending an extra set of hands wherever it was needed.
On one occasion, a line had to be shut down because they ran out of soup. The two kids working that line panicked and asked the director what to do. She calmly replied that they should pray to God for more soup. So, they did. They no sooner got the word “Amen” out of their mouths, then a car pulled up outside stocked to the gills with soup! It was this kind of awesome faith and Godly answer that defined every shift. There was more food than there were people to pack it. So, people stayed late past their shift to lend a hand. And my wife loved the experience.
I wanted to pitch in as well, but obviously someone had to watch Troy while the other one worked, so I signed up to load the food into the trucks today. The church had rented eight U-haul trucks to deliver the food to various apartment complexes. Volunteers would then drive with the truck to the complex and hand-deliver the food to individual apartments. I was on the crew tasked with physically putting the bags on the U-Hauls.
After the trucks would deliver their bags they’d come back to the center to get another load. So, our crew unconsciously organized itself into jobs to handle the volume and quick turnaround. Some people would count off bags, one from each group based on how many went on each truck. Some people would load the bags onto carts, drive them to a truck, and unload them into the truck. While others would grab more bags from the back and bring them to the front for staging.
One guy was in charge of organizing and running all of this. He was responsible for giving instructions to volunteers and assigning them to the various jobs. He also had to keep track of every truck, how many sets should be loaded on every trip, and where that truck should head. As the morning wore on and more and more volunteers showed up to help, this became a daunting task. So, he appointed me to be his right-hand man. I would tell him what truck pulled into the bay, and he’d tell me how many sets needed to be loaded on it. I then would assign a crew to fill the order.
We had a well-oiled machine going once everyone found their niche. A few guys, like myself, helped out in almost every area, filling in wherever the need was greatest at the time. It was hard, sweaty, back-breaking work, and I loved every minute of it! I reveled in the manual labor, and I reveled in the role of leadership. It was amazing to see that many people come together, donating their time, to serve a bunch of people they had and may never meet. It was also amazing to see the generosity that manifested itself in the sheer volume of donations. We loaded trucks non-stop for four hours!
As
the loading was finally winding down, my wife and Troy showed up, and we went
on a few delivery runs with the trucks. We wanted Troy to experience the joy of
giving back and blessing others as we have been blessed. So, he’d help us carry
bags of groceries to people’s doors, see the look of surprise and excitement on
their face, and get to wish them a Happy Thanksgiving. He may not remember it
all later on, but hopefully a seed is getting planted. And I know that we were
supposed to be blessing others, but my wife and I both agreed that this
experience was a blessing to us. So thankful that we were able to do it.
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