A New Experience


We got to work in our second food pantry today!  This time we were at the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, and it was so different than the San Diego Coalition!  In San Diego, we were actually distributing the food to members of the community, but here in LA we were totally behind the scenes inspecting the food before it was sent out to all the food pantries and schools in the LA area.  


Bekah and I were assigned to work in the 'gleaning room', which is basically a huge walk in cooler that is packed with all sorts of food donations.  These donations ranged from milk and eggs to fresh breads, fruits, veggies, and cookies.  You name it, we had it!  


Our job in the gleaning room was to inspect the food and make sure it passed the Food Banks very high standards before it was distributed in the community.  My favorite thing to inspect was the eggs.  There's something strangely satisfying about opening carton after carton and chucking all the cracked eggs!  (Seriously though, who thought it would be a good idea to set a six pack of 16oz coffee creamers on top of a box of eggs?!  I just rolled my eyes knowing what my mom would have said if I had tried to do that while bagging our stuff at the grocery store!)  The other ladies and I had a great time "rescuing" eggs from partially demolished egg cartons, and performing surgery to extract the eggs that were stuck in the cartons ;)  We definitely were not bored!


Working at the Food Bank was different than the volunteer work that I'm used to doing back at my church's food pantry, or with any other food distribution project that I've been involved with.  


My church's food ministry is called West Avenue Compassion (WAC), and I remember waiting for the truck to get to the church from the Food Bank and wondering what kind of food we were going to be able to give to people that day. It was really amazing to see how things worked on the other end of the food distribution process, and to realize that there are hundreds of people who make it possible for us to provide our community with the food that they need! 


I love seeing the different aspects of food distribution, and I'm looking forward to doing this in a few more cities!  It's so awesome to see how people from all over the country share similar goals.  I love seeing people reach out to their communities, no matter what reasons they have for doing it.  For me, it's always been because I want to share God's love with the people I meet.  I want to be able to show them that there is a God who loves them, and follows through with his promise to satisfy all their needs.  Other people might volunteer because of a sense of duty or social expectation.  Whatever the reason, I was thrilled to see so many people there to work, and to work so tirelessly!

While we were at the Food Bank today, I kept expecting the leader to open us up in prayer, or to pray when we had finished working, but he never did.  It was interesting to experience this.  Even though the leaders didn't thank God for providing the food or the volunteers, or ask his blessing on the people who would receive the food, everyone who was there was serving their community out of love and concern for their neighbors.  These people were loving for real, just like Jesus told us to.  It was a great reminder that God is at work in all situations and that he doesn't need us to acknowledge him in order for him to use us to work in other people's lives!  I love it :)

Tomorrow is a full day at Disney Land, so I'm going to go to sleep now so I can be all perky for that 6am wakeup call!  Thanks for reading, and God bless.

Rebekah