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A 'Small Things' guest Editorial
Volunteering
Jan 12,2007
Can You Change the World?
November 19, 2006
By Karen M. Leet Reprinted by permission
Looking to volunteer in my community, I settled on the local food bank. As a busy stay-at-home Mom I needed something that fit my family’s scheduling needs, and I could take my preschool daughter when I worked at the food center. I would be sorting and stacking donations and answering the phone in case of an emergency food need.
I took along a blanket for my daughter to play on while I sorted and stacked cans. She had toys, snacks and coloring books to keep her happily occupied.
My first call came. I jotted down notes to fill a food need. Somewhere between taking the phone call and filling bags with food, it hit me - these were real people desperately in need of food. Hungry people in our own nation, in the midst of our own community, in a time when everyone I knew seemed to have plenty of everything.
Each order I filled touched my heart. I didn’t know family names. I didn’t need to. A third party, an agency representative called in the order and picked up the food.
But nothing for me was impersonal about the process. Gathering food from the shelves, I thought about the family waiting for this food. I thought about the meals they would prepare and what they would need. No point sending them a box of macaroni and cheese if I didn’t include milk and butter for making it; same thing with pancake mix. I read the instructions on the packages and made sure each meal was doable.
A call came for a single person stranded in town with no stove, no refrigerator and no way to prepare meals. I prowled the food bank in search of nutritious meals that wouldn’t need cooking or refrigeration.
Another call named a family involved in a car wreck. Some members were hospitalized. The rest were waiting in a small apartment neat the hospital. They had no money, no food. Whatever I gathered for them would be all they had. I chose carefully, thinking what would help them the most.
My detachment from other people’s hunger went out the window. Before, I had contributed a few cans at a collection barrel at the grocery and thought that was enough. Now when I donated food I thought of what families like my own would need. I chose protein or complete meals in a package or can.
Some day there will be no suffering, no pain, no sorrow, no hunger. But today I know God wants me to reach out to others in every way I can.
Whether you volunteer to fill a gap or you
buy an extra can of food with each grocery order to donate, you can be
part of the solution to hunger in your community right now. All of us
working together can help real people survive real and terrible times
in their lives.
Published in Today’s Pentecostal Evangel Magazine, November 19,
2006. Reprinted here with permission of the author, Karen M. Leet.
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