Breakfast, Anyone?

Last night, I took my son and five of his friends to our church for Open Gym Night. He won the prize for bringing the most friends. We are trying to grow our Youth Group back up to where it used to be in the past. (Another story sometime is how our church imploded on itself a few years back and we lost half our membership and our pastors in a theological split.)

Anyway, the kids had a great time playing basketball, eating snacks and listening to Christian rock. Don't think they paid much attention to the music, but our eventual plans are to have some praise worship mixed in with the Open Gym.

Two of his five friends slept over and this morning, very early for them since they were up all night, I dragged them out of their sleeping bags to go serve breakfast to the homeless. His two friends had not gone before and I learned afterwards by listening to their comments, they had been worried about going. Luckily my kids and their friends do not censor their comments (well, I'm sure they do), but they seem to talk about everything in front of me and I can learn a lot by quietly listening to their conversations.

We ran by McDonalds for a quick breakfast before heading to the church we serve breakfast at, not our church, but a downtown church. The boys set up the tables and put supplies out while the adults cooked sausage, pancakes and scrambled eggs. We scrambled 36 dozen eggs and cooked over 500 sausage links and everything was set up and ready to start serving in 45 minutes. The line for breakfast starts forming by 8:00 am and we have the doors open by 9:00, but we open early if we are ready.

The boys rotated between three stations: handing out trays to the people as they entered the serving line; serving orange juice; and serving sausage. I had pancake duty.

People are so appreciative and thankful for the breakfast. Not all are homeless, but most seem to be. Others, I think, are trying to stretch their grocery dollars. There are some children present, but the majority are adults and of the adults, most are male. A few have obvious handicaps, but most seem able-bodied. They wait patiently in line for breakfast, sit at crowded tables we have set up in a small all-purpose room in the basement of the church, and eat in a slightly smoky haze that develops from the kitchen's inadequate ventilation system. Many of them return for seconds and even thirds. One told me this morning that he hadn't eaten for quite a while and was very happy to get breakfast that morning.

Ages seem to range from late teens/early 20's to older people in their 60s. All smile while in line and thank us profusely for their food and for our service. One little boy, who was probably my son's age, came up for his third serving. He spoke very quietly, so quietly, I had to lean over close to hear him and even then it was difficult.

'My' boys, as we left the church, spoke about how amazed they were at how nice the homeless were to them. I think they had been expecting strange scarey people who would be far different than themselves. They had lots of questions for me afterwards about how you eat when you are homeless? how do you sleep? where do you stay? how do you keep warm?

They had fun and felt useful at the same time. I think it was a good learning experience for them and for me even though I've done it before.