I've always had a desire to start a food cupboard at my church. It hasn't happened yet but I'm hoping that it will very soon. I grew up in a Methodist church that had a food cupboard. At the end of the month my parents would look in the cupboard to see how full it was. Most of the time it was almost empty. I remember going to Costco with my parents on several occasions to buy food for the cupboard. My parents would fill the basket to the top! Sometimes that cupboard only got filled because of my parents. I think that's where my desire came from. I loved that my parents did that.
I decided to start a page on Facebook called Brody's Canned Food Drive. Of course, I had to do everything cause Brody is only 5 but I assure you, Brody was involved in every step. I kept him in the loop every time someone donated. I wanted him to know everything that was going on so he could see how much work and love went into do this.
I told Brody that for 10 days we were going to ask our friends to donate cans. Then I asked him how many cans he wanted to collect.... 500!! Wow, that kid has big goals. I knew we wouldn't reach 500 cans but I figured that if we got to 100 that would be awesome.
Well, we collected cans for 1 MONTH instead of 10 days! Donations just kept rolling in and I couldn't say no. I was pleasantly surprised by how many people wanted to help Brody. Every time we got a donation, Brody would get so excited. He would often talk about the hungry people we were going to help with the food.
I let Brody go through our pantry and pick our food he wanted to donate.
A few of our friends live far away so they donated cans to their local food pantry in Brody's name. I think its awesome that people still wanted to donate even though they couldn't give us the cans personally!
In the end, we collected 204 cans/nonperishable food items. How amazing is that! Not bad for a 5 year old! Here are some of the cans... this was about 2 weeks into our food drive.
I had Brody write Thank You letters to everyone who donated. I thought it was important for him to do that.
Brody didn't understand why he had to do it because it was "boring." I told him that when our friends open the letter and see its from him, their hearts are going to be so happy! That actually made him want to do it. So he wrote 16 thank you letters and mailed them out.
Today we took the cans to Mary's Kitchen in Orange. I wasn't expecting what I saw. I guess I was thinking that it was just going to be a pantry that people could go to and take home what they need. We drove down the street it was on and immediately saw homeless people sitting around on the grass. I will admit that it made me a little uneasy. I went with both the boys, Kevin, and my father in law. I guess I just wasn't prepared for what I saw. We drove into the parking lot and there were maybe 50 people inside the gate, lined up to get food. We parked and a man who volunteers at the kitchen came to the car with a shopping cart and loaded the food up. I wanted to take pictures of Brody donating the cans so I could put it on my blog but when I got there and saw everything, I didn't think it would be appropriate to have Brody posing for pictures. Brody and I got out of the car when the man was unloading everything. I got down on Brody's level and calmly spoke to him. I didn't know if he would be nervous with the way things looked there. I told him that all the people there were homeless and were very hungry, that's why there were lining up for food. I told him that the food he collected was going to feed all those people and that their tummies wouldn't be hungry today because of him. He got a huge smile on his face. My heart exploded.
Coincidentally, in the past 10 days we have stopped 3 times to help people on the side of the road who were holding signs that said "hungry." I'm ashamed to say that I've never stopped for them before. A lot of times I don't have cash on me. And other times I think I'm too nervous to open my window for them. I don't know why. The first time we helped was when I was exiting the freeway. It was just me and the boys. I rolled the window down and gave the man a few dollars. I explained to Brody what I was doing. A couple days later, we were all in the car and Kevin rolled the window down and gave money to a man. We again explained to Brody why we were doing it. The third time it was just Kevin and me going out to dinner. We bought the guy a meal. I've realized that I cant expect Brody to help people when Mommy is too afraid to roll down her window for someone. Lesson learned for mommy.
Next year and every year from now on, collecting food will be on our summer bucket list.
Thank you to all our friends that donated:
Christi and Andrew Gartner
Danielle Eldred
Mary Ann Christine Rich
David and Kristin Wilkinson
Jenn Garcia
Becca Woolstrum
Sarah Lightfoot
Rebecca Dudley
Carol Biniasz
Amy and Joel Garcia
Christy Boen-Kvenvik
Asa Thompson
Christina Dewitt
Karin Duncan
Rebecca Swartz
Wayne Seitz and Linda Hollinshead
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