Location: Breaking Bread Ministries/LaSalle Street Church
Date: Wednesday, November 05, 2014; 5:45-9:00 pm
I was asked if I could lead and
since I have done it plenty of times, I said that I would. This project does not require any prep work
and all I had to do was send out a welcome email to the volunteers. Even though it was November, it was not very
cold and so I walked over to ‘Wells
Street Café’ and as soon as I arrived, Keith looked at me and with mild
recognition said, “Chicago Cares”. “For
now”, I muttered, since there is a possibility that this project may be
cancelled come New Year. I saw the ‘Moody Bible’ students whom I have come
to know over the last few visits, and they are the nicest group of people you
can hope to meet. My volunteers started
arriving and while 2 of them had been here before, 3 were new comers; in fact
some were on their very first Chicago Cares project.
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| Everyone loves 'Tater Tots' |
I had not seen Marianne since she
went on her vacation a few months ago and as soon as she arrived; took charge
of the situation, and through me, started assigning duties to the volunteers. It was “Turkey
Burger Night” and so some folks were opening packs of buns and putting them
in the oven for warming. Others were on
coffee duty and were arranging the cups.
At the salad station people were mixing dressing with the salad and it
seemed like a mixture of ‘Thousand Island’
and ‘Italian’. “Thousand
Italian Islands”, I said. Yeah, I
should be a comedian. There wasn’t
enough fruit for the salad, neither was there any dessert. What we did have were ‘Tater Tots’ and that usually makes up for disappointments!
Everything was wrapped up quite
efficiently and Keith gave his usual speech earlier than usual. He mentioned that we usually get less people
on the first Wednesday, especially since some of our guests get paid. Once again, he picked on Hannah for the 4 key
components of how we welcome guests and told everyone how she has been
volunteering since she was in the 7th grade.
I mentioned to Marianne that I do not even remember how I was like back
then but I certainly wasn’t doing this!
After this was Marianne’s turn to talk about everyone’s personal comfort
level and how we should bring up any issues to her immediately, and then we
prayed. Few of my volunteers would be
serving the juice, while one was the “Nurse’s
Assistant”. Some were in charge of
distributing the 18 salad bowls and 18 other smaller bowls containing the
condiments accompanying the burger. Marianne
said that we should wait till the last minute to put out the condiments, else
the guests would pocket those and there would not be any left. I guess when you are hungry, even the
condiments will do.
I chatted with a young man,
Gavin, who I learnt was Keith’s son. He
is a personal trainer and so we discussed nutrition and whether he approves of
Keith’s menu. We talked about incorporating
some sort of ‘Vitamin D’ in the diet,
especially with winter coming up and lack of sunlight in Chicago. He is a delightful young man and as
impressive as Keith. Marianne told me
about her trip to Scotland and how she saw a guy wearing a ‘Star Wars’ costume playing bagpipes! I asked if she had tried ‘Haggis’ and she said that she had and liked it as well. I went over to take a look at the dining area
and saw that there were several tables without “Salt Shakers”, meaning our guests would have to share. It’s funny that back when we had 21 tables,
there were enough of these, but now that we were down to 18, we are short.
It was time for service and Keith
and Marianne went to the stage and gave their opening address. I was in the assembly line, where someone
would pass me a plate with the buns, I put the burger in it and then passed it
on to another volunteer plating the tots.
We had enough buns and burgers, but not enough tots, and so had to be a
bit conservative with those. Once the
first round was done, I took over the counting duty as the guests lined up for
seconds. I chatted with one of my new
volunteers and learned that he had a ‘Ph.D.’
in ‘Clinical Psychology’. It is always interesting to meet people with
diverse backgrounds and I chatted with him about his work and
observations.
It was time for cleanup and I
helped a bit with tables and chairs and then got all of my volunteers together
for reflection. I asked if they had liked
their experience and what we could do differently. A couple of comments were that we should have more
interaction with the guests. I said that
they were welcome to sit with the guests if they so desired for dinner and they
didn't know that. That is on me and I
made a mental note to tell that to the volunteers moving forward. Before leaving, Marianne thanked me for my
leadership and I told her that even if Chicago Cares cancels the project, I
want to come regularly. She said that
she could still schedule me for first Wednesdays and I said that would be
perfect. It would be a shame if this is
cancelled, because even though we get plenty of volunteers, it is always
important for others to see this and understand our community. That’s how I learned. Plus, how else would they otherwise meet
someone like Keith and Marianne.
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