I Love my church. I spent most of the past year not going, due to having to be at work too early to make it to the early service and still get to work on time. My new dept. mgr., bless his little pea-pickin' heart, will happily schedule me to come in to work after the early service is over. Which is what was supposed to happen again today. But I did not go at 9:00 a.m. as usual.
Instead we had a day of Church Has Left the Building. Everyone who is a regular attendee knew that we were supposed to go out into the community and do good. The staff had created a list of options, but your time on Sunday morning when you did not go to church was not limited to the ideas they listed. Some of which were: visit a nursing home, visit a fire station, visit total strangers at the hospital. Or go out on the bike/walking trail and pass out bottles of water to passers-by. On Sat.., there were a number of projects around town that needed workers to help clean, organize, paint.
My group decided to go to the Food Bank and help pack dry goods in boxes. The bank is not usually open on Sundays, but apparently they were more than willing to accommodate some free labor. I went at 9, and left about 10, so I could go by the church and then on to work. A friend, PC, reported the group of about a dozen people who worked for around ninety minutes packed nearly 500 boxes.
It happened assembly line style. With a couple of folks opening up flattened boxes, folding in and taping the four bottom flaps to close the bottom of the box, then starting the boxes down a long table. With us volunteers standing on each side, and the goods to be packed lining the center of the table. There were extra canned and dry goods stacked on pallets, ready to be used as supplies diminished. Things like cans of green beans, corn, applesauce, a box of cake mix, a packet of blueberry muffin mix, and large bottle of juice/punch. Jars of peanut butter. The woman standing by me, said it reminded her of the old 'I Love Lucy' sitcom where Lucy gets a job on the production line in the candy factory, can't keep up with what is coming down the conveyor belt, and starts stuffing it in her mouth, pockets, coverall front...
The guy who works for the Feeding The Valley program provided some statistics before we got started. I think he said they cover about eighteen area counties, providing low cost food to those in need. The boxes we packed will go to some of those outlying areas, not enough to feed a family, but with food stamps or limited income, certainly helpful to provide daily meals. He reported that Stewart County, to the south of Ft. Benning is the poorest county in the state. I'm just telling what he said. And that there is a county to the southeast of here that does not have a grocery store. The residents have to drive to Albany or Columbus to buy groceries. Hard to believe, here in this land of plenty.
So I'm being thankful for grocery stores. And washers and dryers. And potable water that comes out of the faucet every time I turn it on. And a pantry with enough food in it, to feed us for at least a week. And a job that provides the income to purchase the groceries, even if we do complain about how high a gallon of milk has gotten, or how alarming the price of a dozen eggs is, or question what makes a loaf of bread so dear?
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