Serving at the shelter

I don’t have any pictures from our volunteer day so I thought I would share the first day of school pic.  So full of promise.

As promised, I took Addison to serve lunch at our local shelter (Food for Friends).  He wasn’t excited about going and when he complained about having to go once a month I replied; They need help every single day and we can certainly be there that often if that’s your attitude.  That shut him down pretty dern quick.  However, I did bribe him to keep his complaining to a minimum by saying that I would buy the new Bad Piggies app (the latest and greatest from the creators of Angry Birds) if he could keep a positive attitude throughout the morning.  I’m not quite sure if that promise totally negated the lesson I was trying to impart about abundance vs. poverty but a mom’s gotta do what a mom’s gotta do to maintain her sanity.

When we got there the kitchen was pretty packed with a bunch of college students who had also come to help serve.  We were told that there wasn’t much we could do since they had more volunteers than needed.  Addison didn’t comment but I’m pretty sure his little eyes lit up with the hope of escape.  They did tell us that the natives were restless because they were out of cream and sugar for coffee.  Since we couldn’t serve, the least we could do was make a Wal-Mart run.  We returned with about 10 lbs of sugar and creamer and discovered that the over abundance of volunteers had vanished.  They had room for us on the lunch line!

For an hour I helped Addison dish up ham.  A few people tried to engage him but he isn’t an outgoing kid and shies away from conversation with a stranger.  Heck, he will hardly tell us about his day so I didn’t expect him to win over the clients with any engaging repartee.  About 30 minutes into it he started in about how his legs hurt from standing and he was becoming exhausted.  Whatever, dude.

We were done by 12:15 and on our way to pick up Harry.  I don’t have any tales of life changing experiences or hilarious mishaps.  All in all it was pretty low-key but I would call it a success.  He earned his new app and was at least able to mutter the words Food for Friends when asked later that day where he went.  Addison has accepted the fact that this is going to become a monthly thing and I’m sure there will be lots of complaining, moaning and foot-dragging; he’s a gold medalist in foot-dragging and dilly-dallying.

For me it was a success because a seed of helping others was planted in his little soul.  Now we need to keep watering it.