Serving those most in need

What a joy to have served at Must Ministries today!  I was asked by one of the team members of the local Catholic Church to be part of today's team.  She knows that I like to cook - as opposed to just purchasing items - so my assignment was Italian Pasta Salad.  What is nice, however, is that those who do not want to cook are those who provide the ingredients, so I did not purchase anything. Although I thought that I had followed the recipe to the tee, the other person who provided the same salad, using the exact same recipe, produced a dish that looked far different from mine.  My pasta had disintegrated (it was not the correct pasta, but it was donated, so there is no reason to complain, now is there?) but I added way too much mayonnaise.  Oddly enough, the "diners" loved having a choice between "lots of mayo" or just "a little mayo", and the distribution was nearly evenly split.

Our team's lunch leader had decided on light fare for a warm day.  The choices included tuna/chicken/pimento cheese sandwiches, the pasta salads described here above, lettuce, tomato, chips, pickles, fresh fruit salad and cookies.  There were 80 sandwiches made with only a half of a dozen remaining, and after serving nearly 60 people, the only thing that was left over was a big bag of chips.  Congratulations to our team leader as she hit the count nearly perfectly.  The truth is that very little is discarded by our "diners" since we serve them and if they don't want something in particular, they just let us know as we serve them.

I cannot reiterate enough how grateful our "diners" were with the this lunch meal.  They were kind and gracious and nearly every single one of them thanked us for taking the time out of our day to serve them.  I made every effort to look each and every one of them in the eye when asking whether they wanted "a lot of mayo", or just "a little mayo", because I wanted to communicate to each of them that he/she was worthy of every bit of respect I could relay to them.  I wanted to communicate not only with a spoonful of pasta, but with my heart and my soul.  I wanted to be a gift for them today!