Stories from the soup kitchen

Rebecca Harris

On Tuesday, Team Woodlawn volunteered at the soup kitchen at First Presbyterian Church on 64th and Kimbark.  The church is very active in the community and has many different programs to help feed the needy. The kitchen is open for members of the community to come in and have a full lunch on Tuesdays.  On Thursdays, the church also prepares bagged lunches to hand out.  Produce from the garden across the street (which we volunteered at on Thursday) is often dispensed in these lunches.  The Reverend and other church members are also working on ways to develop a kitchen based on Panera's pay-what-you-can locations, in which a person can come in to eat a nice dinner and do what the name suggests: pay what they can.  Those who can afford to pay can pay, and those who cannot do not have to.

For the soup kitchen on Tuesday, our team arrived in the late morning to start preparing lunches.  After setting the tables, cutting up watermelons, and making coleslaw, we set up an assembly line to put together plates of food for people to eat.  When the doors open, everyone comes in, sits down, and says grace, and then the volunteers serve the lunches.  The room is filled with men, women, and children alike.  This week, there was ample food, so it felt good to serve seconds and thirds and fourths as everyone filled their bellies.

Fireworks as seen from Promontory Point. 

One of the most interesting parts of volunteering at the soup kitchen for me has been talking with the volunteers and listening to their stories.  In particular, I was discussing with one volunteer what we had done to celebrate the fourth of July.  When I asked her if she had watched any fireworks, she responded, “Oh nooo.”  She explained that she always stayed inside for fireworks because they scare her; she never knows if the loud noises are fireworks or gunshots.  The picture that she painted in my mind of her two young grandchildren clinging to her as the fireworks exploded outside is a picture that I will never forget.