Opportunity #1 - Mission Allendale WOW!!!!!!!!! Can I just say that this is the best birthday celebration EVER!!!! I cannot remember a time when I felt so alive! It is amazing to make complete strangers smile :) I am so excited to see what this year holds. Saturday morning Alexis and I arrived at New Options High School in Allendale at 9:00 a.m. We were met with friendly faces directing us to Tim. He gave us a quick rundown of how things work. As we waited for the truck to arrive, we were introduced to the rest of the volunteers and the guests started arriving. The early arrivals signed in for a drawing which would determine the position they would be in line when we started. Just before the truck arrived, all of the volunteers met together to pray for what we were about to do, to pray for the guests who came to receive a blessing that day and to pray for God to move in the lives of those we met today. It was pretty incredible. As soon as we finished prayer, the truck arrived. We began by unloading thousands of pounds of food from the truck and moving it into the gym. The next step was to determine what was in the boxes and sort it out. Some of the food received was fresh produce that needed to be separated and put into smaller bags so that each guest would receive some. Once the food was sorted and put onto tables, each guest was called one by one. My job at this point was to walk through with the guest as they loaded their shopping cart with the food they would take home to their family. Once they had been through the line I would walk them to their car, unload the groceries and then return to the gym to do it all over again with the next guest in line. The guests received food including, yogurt, potatoes, peppers (red and green), onions, lettuce (various types), bananas, asparagus, brocolli, cauliflower, tomatoes, cookies, pears, mushrooms, apple slices, parmesan cheese, watermelon, canteloupe, 2-3 loaves of bread and a loaf of sweet bread. I am told that this varies with every delivery. Mission Allendale gives out this amount of food approximately every two weeks. They do this on Saturday mornings or Thursday afternoons. They dispurse over 5000+ pounds of food each month in our community. The following is a list of tentative dates for food distribution in 2013: Thursday Jan 17 5:00 PM Saturday Feb. 2nd 10:00 AM Thursday Feb. 14th at 5:00 PM Thursday March 7th at 5:00 PM Thursday March 21st at 5:00 PM Thursday April 4th at 5:00 PM Thursday April 18th at 5:00 PM Thursday May 23rd at 5:00 PM Saturday June 8th at 10:00 AM Thursday June 27th at 5:00 PM Thursday July 11th at 5:00 PM Thursday July 25th at 5:00 PM Thursday August 15th at 5:00 PM Saturday September 7th at 10:00 AM Thursday September 19th at 5:00 PM Saturday October 5th at 10:00 AM Thursday Oct 17th at 5:00 PM Thursday November 7th at 5:00 PM Thursday November 21st at 5:00 PM Thursday December 12th at 5:00 PM If you are interested in helping a FANTASTIC organization by blessing those in need in Allendale, please contact Mission Allendale at www.missionallendale.com I was too busy to get my camera out. However, there was a photographer there with us that day and I will add pictures as soon as I recieve them. Stay tuned people, this is just the beginning :)