Sandwich Saturday

Today was a special day. This morning we got to help out with our church's Sandwich Saturday. What this involves is people meeting at church around 9:30 and making 200 lunches that consist of sandwiches, cookies, chips, and bananas that all get taken downtown to another church to feed the homeless and hungry. The adults handled the sandwiches, and the kids would put the other items into lunch bags. I missed out on the lunch making part because I had to stop at the doctor's to get an ear wash (yeewww, I know), but I got to go downtown.

Our church does this every third Saturday, and there are other churches who consistently do the other Saturdays. Many of the needy know about this and they are already at the church lined up at 11:00. Once everyone has gone through the line, if there are extra lunches, they can go back through to get another one. I stood with some of the children and we passed out sandwich condiments, cold water bottles, toothbrushes, shampoo, and other toiletries to people. This all goes very quickly, maybe 10 minutes? Most of the people were very nice, happy to see the children helping and thanking all of us for coming down and serving.

There are two things I witnessed that I want to share because they touched me. One was someone showed up late and we had handed out all that we had. A lady who worked at the church went calling through the people who were on the grounds eating asking if anyone had an extra lunch they could give up. Finally one lady standing near me handed one of her two lunches over. The reason this touched me was because I watched this woman with the two lunches hesitate. It's like she was thinking to herself, can I really afford to give up this second lunch? But she did, even though it might of been reluctantly, she did. It really warmed my heart.

The second thing was after all of this was done and we climbed back into the van to head home, Son kept saying how much fun he had and he wants to do it again. Even though he witnessed a couple of the needy people being not so nice, he still wants to do this. His job was holding the box of mayonnaise packets for anyone who wanted one and if they asked, he extended the box to them to allow them to take what they wanted, and if they said thank you, he responded with you're welcome. Daughter did a great job handing out shampoo, but her favorite part was actually helping to put the lunches together.

I was glad to be a part of this, and I would like to help again also. It was great to help these people, and maybe they don't even realize what blessings they were to our family. God wants us to help the needy. And this was such a little thing, but at the same time it was huge!