putting things into perspective..

Today I went with a group of people from my church to serve food at a homeless shelter in downtown Toledo. I'm not trying to brag about my community service efforts or anything, but I am really glad I went to do that this afternoon. It taught me a lot about being more appreciative of the things I have in life and the opportunities I have been given. It also taught me a lot about patience and compromise.

The particular shelter that we went to was a Christian-based shelter and therefore does not receive any money from the government and relies totally on the generosity of others, particularly from various church groups who donate their time and money to help. In order to stay at the shelter and receive meals, individuals are required to abide by a particular set of rules (no handguns, no violence, no swearing, etc.) and attend church services.

We were told to arrive at the shelter by 4pm to serve food, so we left here at 1:30 to give ourselves enough time to set up and get everything ready. When we arrived, we were told that the first meal service isn't until 5pm. Since we arrived at 2:30, we had over 2 hours to get everything ready. When we were just about done getting set up, we saw another group of people walk in with large containers of hot food. We realized soon that they were from another church and the shelter had accidentally double-booked two churches to bring food on one night. Since the other church was from Sylvania and we were from farther away, they graciously let us stay and serve the food that we had brought and said that they would reschedule their time. This was the lesson in patience and generosity. I can imagine they probably weren't the most thrilled to have prepared all of that food just to realize that we were already there with food to serve.

We didn't serve food to any women or children in person. They have a separate house that they stay in that we sent food over to. We served food to about 80 men in person. Many of them thanked us several times and even came up to us after they ate to thank us again. They were all very polite and many of them refused seconds, even though we had plenty of food, stating that they did not want to appear "greedy." The whole experience left me wondering how I would act if I were in their shoes. Would I have taken the time to come up after the meal to thank the people who had brought food? Would I have been able to hold back on the amount of food I ate in an effort to save more food for others, even if I was hungry and cold? I honestly don't know...I can only imagine how difficult that must be for them. Here I have been complaining on and on about how stressful my life is and how hard it is to go through PT school when there are people out there who don't even have a place to live and have to rely on groups like ours just to have enough food to survive. This experience really put things into perspective for me. I thank God for all of the opportunities He has given me and all of the blessings He has provided for me. I may not have a lot of extra money to give to others, but I will give what I can of my time and effort to help those in need.