Many of us at Peoples have served at the Wayside Soup Kitchen. Further, most have now heard that Wayside has chosen to move their meal service to a variety of smaller community based meal sites and Preble Street is continuing meals at their location. We are continuing to help with the meals there each 5th Wednesday. There have been a variety of concerns and rumors about what this service is like and I would like to answer the concerns and correct the rumors. First, I found the level of security to be quite comparable to the previous management and just as safe. At a recent council meeting, there was mention of an incident where someone was hit with a cinder-block. This is apparently something that happened more than a year ago so is unrelated to the current system and since the new system there has been nothing more serious than verbal altercations. As before, I do not suggest this ministry for younger children. It is true that they now only do cafeteria style service as was sometimes done with Wayside. Therefore they do need a few less volunteers. The ideal total team runs about 15-20 people. The roles for volunteers are somewhat different than previously, but they are all about serving the clients. My suggestion is to get the list of positions from Tom Nelson and make it clear how you would like to serve from this list. From 4:30pm to 6pm they need help with a variety of food preparation jobs. Then there is work to serve plates, monitor cleanliness of tables and condiments, washing dishes and if there is enough help, serving drinks. Finally there is a lot of cleanup work to do when the meal is over at 7pm. It is still permissible for the team to pray prior to food service, but it may be one of our volunteers that has to initiate it.
I would expect that anyone coming to serve at Preble Street now will find it as satisfying an experience as ever. I also recommend against expecting everything to be the same as before. However, if you are open to serving however is most helpful for the cause, you will be blessed in your experience of serving in love.
Many thanks to the South Portland Fire Department who brought a fire truck, and to Hearts and Horses Farm who brought ponies. Many thanks to Kimberley for a fabulous job face painting all day, to Kathy for keeping kids busy with card crafts, to Andy, Teresa, Karen, Betty, Benjamin, Brad, Betsy, Adrienne and others who set up and helped with games, to Betty for creating a 9/11 prayer room, to Jan, Rob, Dianna, Joanne, Chuck and others who helped out with food, to the Wayside, Scouts, Marlene, Chris, Rosemary, Tammy, Debbie and others who brought displays and helped behind the scenes, to Merrill, Chuck and Art for photography, David for the sign, and Brad, Chuck, and others who helped set up and clean up, to Carol for heading up and to all the folks who attended to make this such a great community outreach event!