Feeling Blessed

I am on the Board of a local charity called Metro Lutheran Ministry.  It is a relatively small organization, but with a budget of about $4 million/ year it impacts the lives of many Kansas City families.  We provide emergency assistance in the form of rent or utility payments when the eviction notice shows up or the utility company is about to shut off the utilities.  We have a program called Learning to Earning, which helps people with job skills, interviewing, resumes and job placement.  We have community gardens where inner city folks can grow their own vegetables and we have an orchard with over 100 fruit trees that are available for the community to harvest.  We distribute federal commodities to seniors and we run three large food pantries spread around the metropolitan area.  On the second Saturday of each month we distribute free produce to qualifying families, some of whom spend the night on the street outside of our warehouse to make sure they have a good spot in the line.   

Some of the bagged produce

 

My grandson Wes and I worked at the second Saturday food distribution yesterday.  I spend a lot of my time focused on food.  I love grocery shopping, cooking, writing about food and most of all eating good food.  After spending time Saturday morning sorting, bagging and distributing food to 150 families who can't afford decent food on a regular basis, I was feeling very blessed and just a little guilty.  Each family left with a couple of carts full of good fresh produce.  Things like potatoes, lettuce, tomatoes, clementine's, peppers, and even a watermelon and some good fresh sweet corn.  These are things many of us take for granted but the gratitude expressed and the smiling faces of the clients was pretty overwhelming.  I think it was a very good lesson for my 11 year old grandson and for me.  If you have a good grocery store within easy reach of your home and you have the money to go there pretty much whenever you want you are blessed.