06-29-2019 - A Week to Catch our Breath

It was good to be back home in Fayetteville. We filled our days with more service projects, medical calls, and Medical Health Councils.  I just love it all!

The highlight of our week was dinner with Brett & Elizabeth Merrell and Anna & Mike Ryberg.  It was heart-warming to see their familiar faces and hear and share stories! Thank you!

Elizabeth, Brett, Elder & Sister Merrell, Anna, and Mike
Dinner at Moxie Burger where you can order
fried green tomatoes and fried dill pickles separate or on your burger.

Our area has lots of Christian service projects happening.  One project is a free lunch program for children/youth who would otherwise go hungry during the summer.  These children/youth are very dependent on school breakfasts and lunches during the year, but when summer comes, they need outside help.

For years a group of local churches have worked together to see that these children/youth have sack lunches brought to their doorsteps every day during the summer break. These churches have included our Fayetteville Ward by asking us to supply the small chip bags.

This week the usual building to assemble these sack lunches was unavailable, so they used our meeting house and asked our ward to supply the volunteers.  It was fun to visit with them, and so, so good to have opportunities to become acquainted.

I've already forgotten the names of these ladies from the other churches.
Everything ran like a well-oiled machine.
These ladies knew the best and fastest way to do everything.
There were 267 sandwiches made this day.

While sandwiches were being made, sacks were set out, opened, and filled with apples, water, etc.
and, last of all, sandwiches.
The white bags were for teenagers who were given 2 sandwiches, the brown, for children.  

Elder Phipps, Elder Hopkins, Elder Rushton, wards members, Sister Stoker the RS Pres on far right.
After the lunches were assemble, the good men from the other churches put the sacks
in the back of a van and drove away to start deliveries.

Rod and I have set a goal to help at the Midwest Food Bank once a week.  We feel like that is a good place to meet people and become friends.  This week they needed help scrubbing down around 20 grimy banquet tables. They needed these tables for a "tender mercies" project this weekend where a large number of volunteers would be placed in assembly lines filling plastic bags with a mixture of rice, beans, flavorings, etc. resembling a home-made dry soup mix.  Each bag is to feed 4 people one meal.  They were planning to make 56,000 bags in a two-day period.

We were a little disappointed that we would not be working with other people as we scrubbed those banquet tables, but that changed when the Midwest coordinator invited us for lunch.  We had a chance to visit with about ten people while we ate take-out pizza. After most had left the room, Maria had a few questions about our church. It was a great start!  

Next week, they want us to do data entry.  Maria warned us that we would have to read some bad handwriting. Hopefully our FamilySearch indexing skills will come in handy!

Downtown Atlanta, another photo taken while driving.