At the beginning of the year when I set out to do this I had lots of high hopes. I was gonna two a month, I was gonna do different ones, I was gonna do them with my friend Nikki, and it was gonna be hard to narrow it down cause there are lots of options. Then pandemic happened. Yes, I do hate bringing it up cause I am tired of hearing about it, dealing with it, talking about it, I am just over all all done with it! However, It has effected everything in our lives. The many options that I had to volunteer with at the beginning of the year and drastically dwindled down to a slim few. Everything was canceled. In the month of March there were so few things opened that I was wondering if there was going to be anything to volunteer for. However, there was one opened that I could do.. food prep for the Salvation Army.
Now almost everyone knows about the Salvation Army because of their big end of the year rally where they have tons of people who ring the bell outside of stores during Christmas time. They do other things to raise awareness and money year round. However, I have never seen those efforts in action after everything is raised. That is until last month. They were on my list to help out but it was for the end of the year ringing the bell. I didn't think that I would be helping to feed the homeless. I volunteered to help with food preparations to feed about 30 of the homeless is downtown Knoxville.
When I signed up there was only one spot that needed to be filled. When I got there the gentleman that was there thought no one had signed up! I was thinking that there was going to be more people there, that it was going to be for one meal. Nope, we prepped for lunch, dinner, and breakfast the next morning. I rinsed off fruit, made doughnut trays, and then I made 50 sandwiches and did this in about and hour and half time. I won't lie just showing up to help I felt really good. I have been on that end where I thought I was going to take on a big project by myself, and come to find that I had help was so wonderful! So, just showing up to help in any small way that I could was great.
What was also good is that I got to take out my old hotel breakfast skills for a long over due test drive. Not gonna lie, I was not the best at working breakfast, I could never keep up with the pace of what needed to be cooked as people where coming down. However, not having to worry about the people being right in front of me waiting for food made everything run much smoother for me!
So, since starting all of these challenges in 2014 I have incorporated them into my life after the year was up. I still watch the newest Best Picture winner, I go to as many movies as possible, I do things that scare me and step out of my comfort zone, and I have still been reading! I mean I have read two books so far this year already, and I am in the middle of another. I do volunteer for my church, but I think that if you are going to be a member of the church you should help out in the church where you can. I really want to add volunteering once of month or, every other month, next yer. I want to do it for one place so I can become familiar. I really think that this might be in the running for that for me. I really enjoyed it. I really didn't think I would. What I had planned to do in March got canceled and I just picked this because I needed something. I guess that it wasn't what I wanted but it was what I needed.
If you would like to volunteer for the salvation army, or just find out more information click below and enter your zip code to find your local chapter!
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