This morning while Mike
took five students back to work at Ewa Beach again, I took five students to
Honolulu to volunteer at Feeding Hawaii Together, a food bank. It was a little
awkward when we first got there, because everyone was busy and we didn't know
what to do, but then Mary Ann gave us a tour and a brief overview of how it
works. I tried to take pictures then instead of when the clients were there. A
little while after that, Diane (the pastor's wife) met us and filled us in some
more. Eventually "Uncle Les" (the manager) got everyone together to
pray and gave us our assignments. My favorite line he said was "Be humble,
no grumble." We ended up with two of us in the food line, two in the
clothes area, and Mikaela and I out front helping to fill out forms for first
timers and those with children in need of school supplies. We worked from 10
a.m. to around 1:45--no breaks, no lunch! But when we felt hungry we just
looked at the people around us and kept working. Around 320 people came through
the line. There were babies up through senior adults, of several different
nationalities. We had Hawaiians, Chukees, Chinese, Micronesian, Japanese, Marshallese--some
of whom spoke English well, some with a thick accent, some a little, some not
at all.
There was one older lady
who came up to the table and apparently the only English she spoke was “thank
you.” She handed me her ID and a piece of paper with her address on it and I
filled the form out for her the best I could. When it came to the part about
listing the adults in her household I filled out her info and she understood to
fill the rest out about her husband. She was one year older than my mom.
Another lady, closer to
my age, asked where we were from and thought it was really strange that we
would come all the way from Arkansas to help people. She couldn’t understand
it. She kept saying, “I don’t get that.” I tried to explain that we wanted to
show the love of Jesus, and she took down the address of the church in Ewa
Beach. She also wanted one of our clipboards. She ended up getting kicked out
of the clothing area because she was trying to steal stuff in her fanny pack.
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| Mary Ann giving instructions |
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| Diane giving more instructions |
Some of the men looked embarrassed to be there. A couple of Chuukees waited out by their truck while their wives “shopped,” and they were asking me some questions about school supplies for their kids. They just seemed very humble. And a white man came up right before it closed and asked if he was allowed to get some food—you never would have known to look at him that he needed it. But when I passed him in the “store” he was already eating, like he was hungry.
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| This was my view all day, just different groups of people passing through. |
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| These are the rules and procedures. |
The lady that made me tear up the
most was the one I started talking to because we both have 17-year-old
daughters and we both have daughters named Mikayla (hers was Makayla). She
filled out the form for school supplies, then mentioned that she was disabled, and
said, “Did you know you can get disabled from domestic violence?” That was the
first time I teared up. Later I read what she wrote on the part of the form
where they’re asked why they need school supplies, and she talked about her
daughter needing scholarships, and then wrote, “Thank you and God bless you for
what you are doing. We could not survive without you.”
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| These ladies are Chukees--they didn't speak much English. But we all got tickled together when the younger one wrote that her husband was born in 2015. |
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| Honolulu |
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| "To much funny bussiness" |
Once they closed, all the regular
volunteers got busy cleaning and re-stocking, and we helped a little, then
Grace (who was over the clothing section) called us all together and gave us
leis and we took a group picture.
We all loved working there.
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| The clothing area and Mts. Grace, who gave us all leis. |
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| Pastor Charles telling us more stories. He said that a lot of the older people live on dog or cat food at the end of the month when they run out of money. |
When we left, we finally got to go eat some lunch! We drove down the street to a local fast food place called Zippy's, where I got a mini Zip Pac and an Orange Bang. My Zip Pac was teriyaki beef, a fried Chicken thigh, and 2 scoops of rice with furikake (seaweed) on it. A regular Zip Pac included Spam. Orange Bang was a frothy orange drink that I'm pretty sure was made with Tang. There was a bakery attached, so we all bought some goodies, too, and I bought a cake to take home with us!
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| Dream Cake |
Honolulu traffic was bumper to bumper when we left--it took us twice as long as usual to get to camp. But we made it home and ate supper, then walked to the beach. On our way there we saw two sea turtles in the channel!! While we were stopped to look at them, we saw another rainbow and a gorgeous view.
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| Ignore my finger. Or pretend I'm pointing to the turtles. Can you see them? |
