Submitted by Franklin…
Last Saturday, I went with my roommates to volunteer at a local church to help with distributing food to their community. (This is the same church that we’d been using for weekly SF prayer meetings this past semester.) We had learned that every Saturday, they work with the San Francisco Food Bank to become a hub where needy local residents can come to pick up produce free of charge. We also learned that they could use all the help they could get since their congregation was fairly old and the work involved some heavy labor.
The moment we arrived, we saw the big Food Bank truck parked in the back, so we decided to take picture all together. Before we could snap a picture, the backdoor of the church opened and Auntie D, one of the church leads, greeted us in her usual no-nonsense way. In fact, she didn’t really greet us, but with a smile, exclaimed, “Hey, did you guys come to take pictures or to help pass out food! Hurry, we seriously need some manpower out there!”
In the middle of the courtyard, we saw a huge cart of cantaloupes sitting there and the Food Bank people were unloading more bulky packages of yams, spinach, and other produce that needed to be moved, counted, and repackaged into smaller sizes. As we were finishing up with setup, Auntie D. called Lenin over to do registration. He felt pretty nervous since he could not understand the many Cantonese grandmas who formed a majority of the long line that wrapped around the block. At one point, he got pretty scared because they seemed like they were yelling at him. And he felt insecure thinking that they were complaining he was working too slowly. Later on, he saw that they were actually laughing and that this is simply how Cantonese women interact with one another!
In all, I think about 100 people passed through that day and many of them were genuinely thankful towards us. At the end, I was just very thankful for this opportunity that our house could spend a Saturday morning in this small way to serve the community. We are always wondering about what we can do as a house to bond and I think this is such a good alternative to the usual “fun outing.” Hopefully, this will spur us on to continue as a house to serve the larger community in such ways.
