Meals on Wheels

I mentioned in my Daybook post how the kids and I were making meals for the homeless. A while back we'd brainstormed some good food ideas that wouldn't spoil really quickly. Two days ago we took our list to the grocery store and made our purchases. Then yesterday we assembled some simple meals and snacks to deliver to some hungry people downtown.

Easton was initially the most excited and helped me come up with most of the ideas, but it was Autumn and mostly Dalton who actually assembled the sacks with me:




I hung a grocery sack from each knob in the kitchen which meant we had 6. We put in quite a bit of prepackaged snack-type foods and some fruit. We froze bottles of water and gave them one frozen one and one cold one. Lemonades too. It was 97 degrees on our drive down, I know the beverages likely weren't frozen for long but hopefully they could enjoy a cold drink on such a hot day. We also made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and cookies and added those in as well. We rounded up some cash from the house and were on our way after saying a prayer about the people we were hoping to bless.

There's a particular street running through Denver that is always full of people begging for help so that's where we headed. I talked to the boys about it and told them to look for signs usually written on a piece of cardboard. Immediately upon exiting the highway there was a man and his sign said simply, "Hungry. Even 50 cents helps." We rolled down the window and asked if he liked peanut butter. His eyes got so big, "Yes, ma'am!!" he told me and I handed over a sack of food and gave him a little cash. He was so grateful, expressing his thanks, and it gave the boys such big smiles. The man wasted no time digging in to the bag and the light was long enough for Easton and Dalton see him peeling the banana we'd packed just minutes before.

We drove on down the road and saw another person...the light stayed green though so I had to make the block and come back around. Luckily the light changed and we could hand her a sack dinner and some money as well. She also went for the banana right away after tucking the cash into her pocket. The kids found this coincidence very interesting. We set off down the road again and started coming back the other direction. There were many more people on this side of the road as it was nearing rush hour and the commuters would be heading towards the highway. Easton would help me spot people in need and then the boys would chant, "Please turn red. Please turn red" in regards to the light changing before we got through the intersection. God made it happen: we were able to hand a sack to each person we saw without having to throw it out the window at them as we sped by. No more digging in to bananas right away, Easton observed one woman "put it in her grocery cart" and wondered where she got it and what she does with it. :(

Easton was doing some simple math keeping track of how much money and how many bags we had left and in no time it was all gone and we were back on the highway heading home. E was wondering how much food we thought the first man had eaten by that time.

We prayed again for the people we'd come across and we thanked God for all that we have and that we were able to do that for others. We also talked about Matthew 6:4 "so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you" and here I am blabbing about it on my blog, but it was such a special time with the kids that I want to remember it. And Jason pointed out that it might encourage others so this time, I'm not being so secret about our giving.

On our drive, I asked the boys if they thought we should do something like that again. "Yeah!!!" they both cheered and Easton added, "It was so fun!" I asked E what he liked about it and he said, "It made me happy that we made them happy." And that he knew they were happy "because they said thank you and smiled."

As we were pulling in to the driveway Dalton said, "I know what we could do!: we could play 'home people'" which meant homeless people. He wanted to stay out in the front yard and pretend like other people were already living in our house so we couldn't go inside. So we stayed out for a bit and climbed trees all the while so incredibly thankful that we do have an air conditioned home full of food to walk into when we were done.