Today was long but absolutely worth it! We started out the day at the career center and then split into two groups again. This time, my group drove to the center’s new location (they were leasing their other building out to another company, but that company stopped paying and left without moving any of their stuff out). Part of our job was to help them organize their things to get ready for the move. In the new location, we were taken to a tiny storage closet full of filing cabinets and given a bunch of old files. We spent a couple of hours taking these clamps out of the folders so they could be shredded later on. Not going to lie, I think I got a million paper cuts this morning.
After that, we drove over to Café 458 to finish up serving lunch and to eat lunch ourselves, once again with the homeless population. While we were eating, one of the men showed us a picture of his daughter because he said we reminded him of her. The picture was a high school yearbook photo, and it got me thinking. How can he be homeless while his daughter is in high school? Is she homeless too? Or maybe I’m jumping to conclusions… I guess you could go to Café 458 without being technically homeless. I suppose their family could just be going through a rough time, and he needs help with a few meals. Regardless, it was interesting having a casual conversation with him over lunch – that’s what I like about Café 458, it’s the perfect way to meet people and talk to them. In a regular soup kitchen, we would have been standing behind a table scooping food onto peoples’ trays as they passed by. But here, we’re waiters and waitresses serving people who actually have a choice of what they want to eat! We take their orders, make small talk, get them a drink (which is usually southern sweet tea, a delicious treat I’ve learned to love), and give them their food. When I had time, I always went back to my tables and asked them how their meals were. People were so gracious and excited to see “young kids” doing good things for others.
After finishing up at the center, we went back to the church and helped them with their weekly dinner for the homeless. We put together plates of salads and rolls and bowls of soup and served our customers as they came in and sat down. This was on a much bigger scale than the café – the café serves twenty people at most, but First MCC has around 50 customers each Wednesday night. Beforehand, we helped them sort out their small clothing closet, choosing winter clothes that we could pass out after dinner. After serving dinner and eating with our guests, some of us went around with surveys asking the guests what they needed most and had the hardest time finding in clothing closets. A lot of men said they could easily find nice pants for interviews, but needed jeans for working construction jobs, etc. Another sought for item is underwear, because nobody wants to wear used underwear (I know I don’t!).
After dinner, Reverend Paul cornered us and gave us $120 that had been donated to us by the church, because they wanted us to spend a day seeing the city after a long day of work. I swear, these are the most giving, gracious people I’ve ever met!
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