Braving the Service Project

Last year {you probably don't remember...and it's okay} Ryan and I served at the Grant County Mobile Pack for Feed My Starving Children. You can read more about that day and what the organization does...here.

This year, the mobile pack came back to our area and one of the guys in our Sunday School class was instrumental in bringing it back, so of course our class planned to serve again. Ryan was SO excited, because he loves stuff like this. So I signed us up early on, and we made plans to work the project that day.

And then.

Ryan has to take classes at random to get continuing education credits for his degree. It's rare that he can find a class to fit the requirement that is also free. And sometimes the classes can get pretty pricey, actually. So it just so happened that a class became available the same day as the mobile pack.

It was a no brainer. He had to go. He couldn't pass up the opportunity to get credits for free. I  knew it. But the thought of going to that mobile pack by myself took me back to dark places of junior high that I had no desire to revisit. I thought about backing out, but then I got guilt gut over it. I knew they counted on their volunteers, and our family had already backed out one of them, so I couldn't find it within me to back out citing reasons of being scared. {And apparently I found the one thing that countered last year's declaration that I would "happily serve again. HAPPILY."}

So the morning of the mobile pack, I removed all my jewelry except my wedding ring, which if you read last year's post, you'll remember was quite the debacle then. I pinned back my hair so it would fit better in my stylin' hairnet, and I drove to the church to pack.

Several of our Sunday School friends were already there when I arrived, and our friends Nate and Jenna so graciously adopted me and let me sit with them {seriously - it was junior high!} so I didn't feel like such a dork. Although seriously. I think the hairnets level the playing field on the junior high thing.

We sat through the intro, where they gave us all the instructions for the day...

And then we headed in to get to work.

I was not even worried at that moment, because I'd been told that our class had all been assigned a table together, so I knew I would have friends, and life would be merry.

Or so I thought.

Apparently there were two tables assigned to our class {because it's big anyway, and people could bring their kids to help, so with kids added, there were just a LOT of us}. Each table has two packing stations on it. Well evidently our class filled one full table, but only had enough other people to fill half the second table {one full packing station}. Since I was the only person there without family, I was moved to the other side {which I named the island of misfit toys} with other potluck people from other over-filled tables.

Cue the panic.

For the first hour, none of them really spoke to me, and by the end of that hour, my knees were sore from being locked, my back was sore from bending over to seal the bags, my left hand was dripping sweat inside its glove {required since I refuse to take off my wedding ring} and I was wishing I would have worn my swimsuit, because it got pretty warm in there. So I sort of forced the poor lady working next to me to have a meaningful conversation with me to get my mind off the heat and the sore back!

And I took a selfie for Ryan:

I've decided to incorporate the hairnet into my everyday life.

At the end of our shift, we had a group picture taken:

The stats for the entire weekend {not just our shift} said that over two days, 800 volunteers came together, 172,800 meals were packed to feed 471 starving children for a year.

So it was worth it to brave the junior high fears to help the kids! {But please dear class scheduling people, let me have Ryan next year!!!}