Building Houses, Filling Holes

Saturday, January 18 was our first Habitat for Humanity build day. Five of us met at Jubilee Commons to you know... build a house! Or, houses. Habitat is working on a new phase of homes at the Gresham site and we got right down to it. The task assigned to us that looked most like what you might expect was attaching boards to the tops of the foundation walls. The glamorous side job was filling a hole. A very large hole, with very wet and heavy dirt. Both tasks were tackled with equal enthusiasm, and I'm sure both were equally appreciated. I may venture to guess that one task was slightly more strenuous than the other, but it probably wouldn't be right to say so. We took a good break walking down the street for Don Pedro's for lunch, and Porter the dog was on site to keep spirits high. Our efforts were also recorded in this Oregonian story. This was the Martin Luther King Jr. service weekend and we thank all the volunteers who chose to observe the holiday with their time, hands and hearts!

OATS!

Having visited the Oregon Food Bank four times now, we've learned that we can never know what to expect. Sometimes we're fishing recalled peanut butter out of donated items, sometimes we're sorting through soup, beans and cake mixes, sometimes there's Asian pears as far as the eye can see, and sometimes... there's oats. January 5th we arrived to find several 1,600 pound bags of donated oats needing our attention. As you can imagine, the oats needed to go into smaller family-sized bags. There were also a few boxes of turnips that needed similar treatment, but that's another story. We had the best time with the oats! Two heaping scoops of oats equaled two pounds, and there were scales on our table so we could verify that we were providing Oregon Food Bank quality with every bag. Hair nets, aprons, gloves and sleeve guards were required. Our assembly line had things down to a science. We finished our first 1,600 lb bag and made an impressive dent in a second before our visit ended. You can see by the photo, but all together the volunteers with both oats and turnips processed 10,076 pounds of food, which equates to 7,751 meals and (my favorite statistic) 121 meals per volunteer. It's amazing and wonderful that something as fun and satisfying as scooping oats with friends can actually be meaningful. We send those oats and turnips to those who need them most - with our best wishes!

Back at Snow Cap

December 19, 11 from Return Serve prepared food bags for Snow Cap Charities. It was a big day of packing a well-rounded assortment of food into the bags that get distributed to families in East Multnomah County. There were eggs, there was milk, fruits, vegetables, pasta and cereal. We also had team working on filling soup bags. The food goes in the bags and the bags go in the boxes and the boxes are loaded onto pallets. In just two short hours we accomplished a lot, but then the Snow Cap folks surprised us with lunch! It was so nice to sit and chat with those who were there, but we certainly didn't expect it. Thanks so much to them for letting us come back to help, and for cheering our holiday season even more by the work they do every day.