Blessings in Volunteering

Today was Angel Food Ministries distribution. Any of you that get Angel Food know that it is a savings for the food you get for your $25. There is no income level that must be given out, and everyone can order. While I may not like all the food, for the price you can donate the food that you do not like or want to someone else.

Our church has been doing this for a few months now and I have helped with both order taking and distributing. Today we had 160 boxes plus the specials to give out. People can come over an hour and half time frame and running like an assembly line it makes the giving out go quickly.

I sit and take the orders for the next time so people can pick up and place the next month's order in one trip. I enjoy this part of it because you can get to talk to the people that come and get to know the people in the community. I am a people person so I find it fun to have the different people come and many are not in a hurry so they talk a little. Today I had some elderly people that live alone and just want to talk, I had a younger woman with a child and the child was the talker and then I had another man who sat and talked.

This man was interesting. He lost his wife a year ago and I was able to share with him in his pain having lost my first husband and knowing what it was like. He then informed he has buried 3 wives and two of his children, one at 22 and one at 38. I listened to him talk about the circumstances around his kids death and then somehow he got to talking about his not being able to drive much anymore and having to part with some of his cars. Soon he was talking about these old cars he has in a museum in Maine. MAINE!!! With that he talked about the cars at the trolley museum and they have been there since 1973. I told him I have seen his cars, that I moved here from Maine and that I took my grandson, Sean, to that museum.

I was thrilled for the surprises that comes when you are doing things for others. Seems I get blessed more than they. This conversation made me think back to when Sean was little and loved trains so much. We took him and his cousin Ivy to go for a ride on a train in Wiscasset, ME. Sean was a tough kid, loved trains, yet when that train pulled up for us to get on he ran off! We had to grab him and fight him to get him on the train. Once he was there he was fine, but it took some doing to get him there.

Angel Food Ministries blessed many, but volunteering to work with it blesses me. I had not thought of that incident in a long time. Today I was able to think about the trolley museum trip with Sean and the train ride with he and Ivy and enjoy them again in my mind.

If you get the opportunity to help, take it. You never know who you will meet and how you will be blessed.