The last Sunday of every month we feed the homeless here in Tulsa. This time we fed 102 meals, and it ran smoothly! The volunteers are experienced, and can run the whole thing without direction.
We got pizza donated from pizza hut:
With the requested macaroni and cheese that we serve every month.
Chili and corn is popular:
We assemble foam carry out trays two at a time. These are assembled into boxes based on what we know how many live at each camp.
Here's the green bean casserole and the chicken Alfredo;
We have requests for these, so we serve it often! The macaroni and cheese is another by request item. She puts cream cheese and straight cream in it so it really pops!
Here's two volunteers boxing up food:
A lot of logistics go into this part. It's common to have several deliveries sent by one car. They must be right, and the 'close' ones are loaded together! We throw in the desserts here, and send a 5 gallon container of tea or lemonade (we fill a lot of drink bottles too). We usually have 3 delivery drivers, with a ride along to help them unload. With about 2 trip each, we have it covered pretty well!
I apologize for the half full roasters, I usually take the pictures before we begin serving. Here I just forgot the pictures, until we slowed after the first 60 or so!
The volunteers have become skilled enough that most of the conversations are just visiting and catching up. So they have a good time on top of getting the homeless fed! They come from four different churches, and three different denominations; but they've become good friends doing this meal together. We work out of a food bank leased by one of the churches, so we have a roof over our heads! We served under a pair of canopies for about a decade, and had all the fun with bad weather I want. Very glad to be under cover now, we 'enjoyed' temperatures from 18°F to 110°F under those canopies!
My big worry, is as the economy continues to tank, more will need this kind of help! Can we keep up with the increased loading? In the past we fed close to 300, but that's significantly more difficult...and we're out of practice. We are gaining about 5 a month, hard to plan for a moving target!
Be blessed!
