On Tuesday Sophie, Tibeau and I worked with Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen. As we have now visited many different food banks and soup kitchens I have realized how different each one is. They all have their own systems for everything, which is noticeable from the moment you walk in. We were told that most volunteers arrive around 9:30 AM so we arrived a few minuets early at about 9:15. Unlike many of the other locations we had visited they did not want our help to prep for their guests. We waited until 10:15 to get our job assignments. In this time I noticed that all the full time volunteers were working to set up the food lines and clean up stations but the 20 or so other volunteers waited until just before lunch service started to begin working. Once we finally started we were all assigned to a different food to serve. For example I was collard greens serving line two, and Tibeau was fruit serving line one. Together with the other volunteers we created a long assembly line of lunch trays. The first person was in charge of fruit and bread they then passed the tray to salad who passed it to collard greens then to turkey stew and finally the last person would put a fork, knife, spoon and napkin on each plate. For two hours the two lines continued to create these trays and there were almost always people to give them too. To me this was the most impressive part of Holy Apostles. While is did not feel like it was where we got most involved with each person or even did the most work, I was literally watching the difference we were making as each person walked through the door. The volunteer coordinators told us we probably served about 800 people in the two hours. Knowing that we had served that many people a hot and balanced meal they otherwise probably won’t have had.
