If you’re reading this and you weren’t there, you should have been! It was fantastic.

Over 40 people showed up including a group of 20 high school students from Carrol that wanted to get in on the action as well. I think everyone brought donuts or baked goods to share. We had so many goods that we ended up adding to people’s food as they left in order to distribute everything. As we mentioned before, all the coffee was donated and a local church just down the road offered their coffee brewing equipment to be used for free.

To those who showed up in 5 degree weather, brought food and to the corporate partners who helped make this happen, THANK YOU! I hope you had as great of a time as I did.

The Story….

Everyone arrived at 7:45 am at the church to gather, receive instruction and then launch. Once we got organized we headed down the road to the food bank to setup and begin serving the coffee and donuts. Once we arrived, we were met by the staff person who heads the food bank up telling us that they’ve been sending people back to their cars because of the extreme cold and not wanting people to stand in line. They encouraged us to do the same or wait inside. The group eager to get started decided that we’d setup a central location where we could distribute from and groups of people would go to the people in their cars and offer them a coffee and a donut.

By around 8:15 or so, nearly everyone there early to get in line had come out of their cars to get in line because they saw us out and saw what we were up to. By 8:30 we had served everyone hot coffee and hot chocolate as well as given as many donuts as people wanted.

Did I mention is was cold?

Due to a group of volunteers scheduled to distribute food inside that day failing to show, we were asked if any of us would like to help out. So, a large group of people after our first wave of coffee went in and help with the distribution. It was good we showed up. The rest of us committed to stand in the cold with the rest of the line having conversations with them to pass the time. Luckily, the food bank opened the doors early and let the people line up inside out of the cold.

To fast forward to the end, almost everyone stayed until 11:30am to continue serving coffee and donuts to those in line and help distribute food to those seeking assistance. The young high school guys began helping carry extra loads for people to their cars which helps speed things up as well as get people extra food that they wouldn’t have been able to carry themselves.

It was a great day and we’re excited for the next mission, whatever that may be…