Food Drive

This past week has been pretty focused on the food drive that our Branch was doing.  I signed Matt and I up for two areas (about 250 houses total).  We had to go around on Monday and Tuesday and deliver fliers to each house in our area to let them know about the food drive.  We had two perfect fall evenings for the walk around the neighborhoods.  It was beautiful.  Maitland was so cute in his stroller and happy as could be to hang out with Dad and Mom and walk around Lloyd.  I actually thought it was pretty fun until I stepped off the step of one house and sprained my ankle.  Just call me grace! haha What a mess.  Anyways I walked it off and continued on my way.  Matt was way faster than I was and we were finished our area rather quickly.  Once all the fliers were delivered we had to go back to our areas and pick up any donations that people had left on the doorstep.  Matt was working today so I recruited one of the YW to come with Maitland and I to help out.  I was quite disappointed with the first area we went and picked up in.  Only 5 houses out of over a 100 left donations.  We had better luck in our second area but not much.  I was pleasantly surprised when Mandy (my sis-in-law) called and told me that a guy on her route had filled the back of his pick-up with cases of soup and left them for us to collect.  That was impressive.  When we got back to the church it was amazing to see all of the food we had collected from around town.  There was a lot!  We had to go through each bag/box and check all of the expiry dates and then sort the food into different categories.  This took a long long time (several hours).  Once we had them all sorted and put into banana boxes we loaded them on pallets and then into the back of a semi trailer. We took the loaded trailer to the Salvation Army and proceeded to unload all of the food.  I went to help with this...bad idea...jks!  We ended up having to lug each box of food ( and most were NOT light)  I was put into the line at the top of the stairs...had to hand each box down to the next person in line (sorry Indie for almost dropping a huge box on your head!).  I may have slipped and let a cuss word or two slip...most of those boxes were freaking heavy!!!  I was amazed as I watched one of my friends from the ward work so hard to pass the boxes.  She is a petite woman and was born with only one arm.  This didn't deter her from doing her share of work or trying to lift even the heaviest boxes.  I did laugh a few times as she was grunting to heave the next box on to the next person in line.  Very inspiring to watch.  Warms my heart to see all of the amazing people in our area who are so willing to give of their time and effort for others.  It took just about an hour to unload the trailer and we had around 140 boxes of food to donate.  It turned out to be a very successful event and I think it can only get better with repetition.  I had a lot of fun spending the day with the members of our Branch and serving our community.  I hope the people who need the food get it and are able to appreciate all the work that went into that donation.  And I hope that my back recovers swiftly!!!