Last day of school for me. Yay!
That means I start following Don around all summer on Youth trips. Yay!
Also means I'll be gone at least 4 Tuesdays in a row. "sigh"
Think I'll get "guest bloggers" to do it each week.

I have started a new blog, though, called Events from an Uneventful Life.
I can post from my BlackBerry while I'm on the road this summer. Kind of excited about that. The address is http://eventsfrom.blogspot.com. Check it out if you're bored.
g

...but I might change my mind in the future.

Some nights it's like getting on a roller coaster at 6:00 and not getting off until 9:30. I was wore slap out when we got done this week.

Twig was out, so it was pretty much up to me to decide what was for supper, and you know how I roll. I left my options open up until about 5:15. The Bread Lady had some nice sub rolls so I pulled the trigger and went with meatball subs.

Fairly easy.
Really good .
Lots for the volunteers to do.
A win/win all the way around.

I had some food that had been given to me, but not enough to do the both stops. Dorothy Crumpton gave us some apple crisp, potatoes, and stuffing. Gary McKnight gave us some fried chicken, barbecue, beans, and new potatoes. We took the potatoes, stuffing, a little chicken and mixed up with cheese on top and put in the oven. Kind of a no-name casserole, but it was good.

We also got 25 lbs. of strawberries and 20 lbs. of blueberries. Nothing fancy there. Cut them up, throw some sugar on them, put them in those yellow cake cups with some Food Lion cool whip. They were a hit. We used all the strawberries and a bag of the blueberries. Saved some for the next pancake night.

We had someone donate some bag lunches to us and we gave those to our friends as they left.

Then as we were winding down at the 1st stop, the folks that run the Babyfast program finished their session and gave us some more chicken and desserts.

We were hustling like crazy trying to figure out where and how we were going to give it all out. We got it done, though. We had a few meatballs left and we froze them, saving them for another night.

BAILEY/ANDY/J.BOGGS/DAVID/SEAN/RYAN/LIZ/MICHAEL/
DEE/MARK/CONNOR/BLAKE/STEVE/TERESA
/SAM/MITCH/LAURA/ANNA/PRUDEN/CRAIG/CHRIS/ESPO/
NICK/SAMANTHA/CHRISTIAN/BRIEN/CRAIG/WILLIAM/GARRISON/
MAGGIE/MADDY/ALEXANDRA/CREEEECH!/TAYLOR//
and me are the 35 (35!) people who pulled it all together.

While I'm naming names....
Not every adult works good around or with kids. Some adults aren't wired for it. I have some great adults who show up week in and week out and do a awesome job with the youth that participate. Mitch Cook brings a crew of 2 or 3 boys every week and works non-stop while he's there. I told you a while back about the help that Steve Leger is. John Liverman - same thing. Not just a lot of help, but good with and good for kids. Anna, Brien and Teresa are all wonderful helpers and great with kids. Pruden, too. That makes things a lot smoother, believe me.

One of the things we have gotten better at is interacting with the people we serve. For a long time most of the youth would stay on the serving side of the table all night. Some would come out when slowed down but just a few. Most of the dialogue was while they were coming through the line.
And when we had just enough to work the serving table, it was understandable. But now when we have the numbers we've been having lately, I"ve been emphasizing that if you're not actively doing something at the table, you have to be on the other side and I expect them to be talking to the people that come to eat. Some kids are naturals and do a great job. Creeech! does. Maddy Blue is another. Peyson Hunt talks to a guy named Aaron the whole time he's there. When Peyson is not there, Aaron ask about him. Shane Willis and Hampton Cook, too.

One thing I've gotten good at it is spotting the FREE DATERS.
Now, most of the kids that come do so because they want to help and good hearts. They are sincere and do tremendous jobs.
BUT sometimes....I get used like a dishrag by kids looking to get together without actually going out.
It works like this:
I'll see a guy who start coming that hasn't been coming before. The same night I'll notice a girl that kind of came out of the blue. Then I notice it 2 or 3 weeks in a row. Aaahhh..... sneaky young romancers.
Parents aren't gonna let them go on a date during the school week.
Might not even let them date at all.
BUT they will let them come help me feed the homeless.
BAM! FREE DATE!
Oh yeah, it happens. It's happening now.
I could name names. I won't tonight......

...I will start running and yelling at the top of my lungs to let her know where we are.

Smithfield Pork in Tar Heel gave us some meat last week. Not the amount they gave us a couple of years ago (6,000 lbs), but two big bone in tenderloins and two large boneless tenderloins. Twig put them on the cooker around lunch today and we started working on them about 6:15. We took it off the bone and made a big pan of pulled pork, while others took the tenderloins and used the electric slicer to cut them into nice sized slices. It was very tender and moist. we had a large steam tray pan full of pork for the folks tonight.
Make 5 gallons of mashed potatoes, 3 1/2 gallons of corn, assorted desserts, and 7 gallons of Sweet Tea, ...we were good to go.

(I have realized I might actually leave a legacy and this is what it will be: I taught kids how to make instant mashed potatoes and incredibly sweet tea in large quantities. I can live with that)

MAGGIE/ MADDIE /JOHN /J.BOGGS /JON HILL/ LIZ /T.J. /CHAMBERLAIN PEYTON /ELLEN /HAMPTON /GEORGE/ BLAKE/ STEVE /ANNA /TERESA /BRIEN/ TWIG/ 6'7"SEAN /LAURA /JANE /CREEEECH! /ALEAXANDRA/ JOSH /SARA MICHAEL /MITCH were the hands and feet to God's goodness for the folks tonight

After the heat of the day earlier, the evening felt great. We get daylight all through the first stop, which is nice. The area we serve the first stop is the courtyard in front of the connector building between our church and the WLI building. It's such a nice spot for what we do there. It's almost hard to remember doing it anywhere else, but we did and it's my stubborn fault we were so long moving to where we are now.

I remember being so adamant about continuing to serve across the street. I had my reasons.
1. We started there ( Me and change don't always get along.)
2. People knew we were going to be in that spot.
3. Someone was telling us we couldn't do it there.

I didn't say they were good reasons.

Some lady was griefing us about being on public property, and some public ordinance, blah blah blah. The kind of person I immediately size up and write off as a pain and just looking to make life miserable for us. She called the police on us two weeks in a row even though we had permits.
The police were very nice and sympathetic to us and had no problem with it but we finally just said "Bonk it" and decided to move to church property. I was surprised when they said we could do it in the courtyard. I thought we'd do in parking lot out back or underneath in the parking garage. But they said sure and we started setting up there. For several weeks I would go over to the old spot and direct people across the street to the new one.
And we've never looked back.

But a couple of less than solid reasons and a petty resistance to being told what to do by someone I didn't like, kept us there when a much better spot was literally around the corner. I try to keep that lesson in mind as I do stuff these days.
Not always good at it, but getting better.

There was one other reason that I resisted moving from there. I've never told anyone this, but I will now.
The spring after we started, the numbers coming to eat was dwindling, as was the amount of youth to cook and serve. One night I prayed that if the crowd on both sides was low I was going to stop and start back in the fall. That was the night it was just me and Gary McKnight and the woman gave me $950 and told me to keep feeding those guys. And we have.
But what if she came back one night to see if were still feeding those guys......and we weren't in that spot?
Would she look around to see if we'd moved?
Or would she think I'd stopped?
I didn't want her to come back and not see us in that spot.
It was kinda important to me.
I didn't want to admit that to anyone, but it was.
But we moved, and it was the thing to do. We should've done it before we did.

Now I'll tell you another thing I've never told anyone else, either.
Every week I wander to the front of the courtyard and look down the block to where we used to feed, just in case.
'Cause if I see her car down there.......