Blessings at His Work, His Way
His Work, His Way is described as volunteers doing work for people in need.
It also should be described as a real time of blessings – at least for those in the kitchen/fellowship hall.
After a week, I could not help but praise God for all the blessings – and for the volunteers who were a big part of those blessings.
In no particular order, here are some of the blessings – both serious and humorous, but all heartwarming during the week.
- Seeing people working together from at least five different denominations (Catholic, Presbyterian, Baptist, United Methodist and Community) to serve the same God, getting along to get the work done and in good spirit.
- Seeing people from all ages working together. The youngest volunteer was 10 – a boy who came with his mother to help in the kitchen. The oldest was 90 – a woman who came with her daughter (she lives out of town and visit frequently and has come all three years now!).
- Watching the young people interact with their homeowners during the homeowners’ dinner. I wish you could have seen them. They were phenomenal. In fact, one homeowner commented, “There is our future and it looks pretty good.” What a tribute. Another wanted to adopt one of the teens.
- Having a volunteer appear after breakfast and lunch daily to see what he could do to help – emptying garbage, restocking the coolers, sweeping the floor, etc. And, always with a warm smile and willing heart.
- Serving hot meals on time every time – with campers ready to be fed each time. It is always good to do things on time and the kitchen staff and the campers really worked hard to make that happen.
- Realizing the extra blessings from God just when it was needed. For example, I wanted to get sweet corn for Sunday dinner, but absolutely refused to pay more than $3 a dozen. The Saturday before camp started I, I got a circular announcing corn was going on sale Sunday morning – for $3 a dozen.
- Someone (I don’t know who) donated a box of six servings of tomato soup, which I had no idea how I would be able to use it. My sister, Jane, said to put it with the other supplies and see what happened. Later in the week when we were trying to decide what to serve for the vegetarians (the first time to my knowledge we had vegetarians), there was the soup. Add toasted cheese sandwiches and you have at least something special for those who prefer no meat.
- A suggestion from Bobbie Wratic in passing resulted in bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches – using up the extra bacon and lettuce.
- And finally, on Friday night when we left the church, I realized we needed more eggs. John Sperry (who donated all the eggs and delivered them) had gone for the week and I thought we had enough. I decided I would just buy some Saturday instead of calling him. But when I got to the church Saturday morning, there he was – with 15 dozen more eggs. He couldn’t stay and cook because of work issues, but he took time to bring the eggs, not even knowing for sure that we needed them. Is our God wonderful and our people responsive or what?
Other blessings:
- Have a team of teen-agers join us to help prepare for the homeowners’ dinner. What a blessing they were. Another teen joined us for three days in the kitchen and, likewise, she also was a true blessing.
- Having tons of donations brought to the churches from people in the churches for the meals. This served three purposes: Geeing everyone in the church involved; cutting the food bill in about half; and eliminating a lot of shopping on my part. We put out 225 cards at both High Street and Trinity. All but about 40 of them were taken at each church, meaning we had 180 cards from each church taken – then the items were returned to the church – including water so we didn’t have to buy.
- Having volunteers who showed up with willing hands and warm spirits, ready to work together to get the job done. They were fantastic; it was the best year ever.
- Getting to know people from our own congregation a little better – as well as people from the other churches.
_ One man took all the garbage away on Friday so it wasn’t piled up outside so much.
- Reconnecting with people from our past and laughing over silly things, which aren’t really all that funny – unless you ttwere there. I was glad I was there.
On the humorous side, we learned:
- It takes five women about five minutes to empty a garbage can with a bag that had been packed down tightly in the big garbage can. John Sperry did the same thing the next day – in one yank in about 15 seconds. But he didn’t laugh as much as we did.
- Gina Roberts has a wild time at her house with her animals. Listening to her tales was worth the whole week. She is such a blessing.
There were so many blessings all week that it didn’t seem like work – most of the time. It was definitely worth all the hours.
Now for some numbers:
Volunteers in the kitchen: 61 total. Someone was there from 6 a.m. to about 8:30 p.m. every day.
Bottles of water served: About 620.
Number of eggs donated by Sperrys and served as scrambled eggs, quiche, egg salad, deviled eggs and in meatloaf: 1,020 for the week.
Number of yogurts served: About 140.
Pounds of hamburger: About 55.
Pounds of bacon: About 60.
Lots of fruits and veggies, including all the cucumbers brought. People definitely ate healthier this year.
Meat: About 40 pounds of ham, 20 pounds of meatloaf and 160 pounds of turkey.
We gave some leftover rigatoni to Life Builders and a little non-perishable stuff to the Samaritans. The rest we sold in our “store.”
We recycled everything – from watermelon rinds to egg shells to cardboard and plastic and coffee grounds.
The food was for the pigs and chickens and crows (no meat for the pigs); the rest went to recycling or for composting.
It truly was a blessed week, as you can see. I cannot thank everyone enough for their continued support, doing what was asked and even what I didn’t ask them to do.
His Work, His Way certainly did what it was intended to do: Get people working together to benefit other people.
In doing so, we also got blessed.
- Jean Shanley, kitchen coordinator.
