Tuesday morning at the homeless shelter.
A couple of times each month, Big Guy and I serve breakfast at the homeless shelter at our church. We serve for the organization called PADS - Public Action to Deliver Shelter. This means we are waking up at the painful hour of 2 am to cook (ugh!). Here’s our morning:
3:30: We’re cooking sausage links. A couple hundred links. We have 75 guests, twelve of whom are children. We start cooking french toast - approx. 150 slices, so each guest will get two pieces. Someone has donated fresh, thick sourdough bread, and the aroma of ground cinnamon blends with good warm sausage. A few of the guests wake up and wander into the dining hall.
4 am: Twelve dozen eggs and twelve pounds of diced ham make a great scramble. Big Guy spent Sunday afternoon (between trick-or-treaters) cutting up the ham from the remains of last Monday’s shelter dinner. Someone has brought in sweet peppers from their garden, so we saute those, too.
Each week we get volunteers from the Naval Base. These guys worked the dinner shift and then spent the night with the homeless. They did a great job serving breakfast from 5 to 5:45, when the first bus comes to pick up the women and children.
While the guests are eating and picking up bag lunches, volunteers clean up the sanctuary where they slept (we don’t ever take photos of the guests). We generate a ton of laundry each week. By 7 am all the guests are gone, and we volunteers start our regular day while the church’s senior citizens sweep, mop, vacuum, and clean toilets in the church. I am in love with this group of seniors. The same group does this every week - and they’re in their seventies and eighties.
Next time I work a dinner shift with my daughters, I’ll chronicle that for you. Happy Tuesday to all of you with homes and without!
Published by angelawd on October 30th, 2007 tagged Daily Christianity
October 30th, 2007 at 9:02 pm
“A couple of times each month, Big Guy and I serve breakfast at the homeless shelter at our church.”
Thank God for people like you. Seriously.
October 31st, 2007 at 7:44 pm
Can I just say- God Bless you and your family. What a wonderful post - what a wonderful looking meal. I second Sue in saying, Thank God for people like you.
November 1st, 2007 at 8:16 am
Thanks, you guys! It really is a pleasure to serve even though sometimes it can be scary - and it is very hard for me to get up at that hour! Still, I am not sleeping on a little pad on the floor of a church, so I don’t have much to complain about : )!
November 2nd, 2007 at 5:29 am
Angelawd didn’t mention she’s the leader of that shift, coordinating all our efforts on those mornings! There are amazing volunteers that work at our emergency homeless shelter. The PADS season is from October 1 to April 30, every Monday night to Tuesday morning at our church (churches rotate to cover every night of the week). Some people have volunteered virtually every week for the past 7 years that our church has been a site! The dedication to the care and comfort of the guests is truly heartwarming. God blesses us greatly every time we serve the homeless.
November 2nd, 2007 at 7:56 am
Thanks for bringing out this extra information about PADS, Big Guy! What’s really interesting is that there are usually 2 sites each night, and on Mondays, all the guests are hoping they are sent to our church.
November 2nd, 2007 at 6:04 pm
You all are wonderful and yes I do believe that God will definitely bless you all for your actions. Thanks for reminding me why I shouldn’t be shirking my church duties. Have a lovely weekend.