WHAT HAPPENS?

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Volunteers from EEC cook and serve meals for our neighbors—homeless families in Alexandria. Residents of the Carpenter’s Shelter have welcomed our parishioners and their friends on the first Wednesday of every month. If you would like to join us, please email skellis5@gmail.com for information and to be added to the list, and then please use the links above for cooking and serving. In the past EEC folks have volunteered as part of other churches’ efforts, but now we have our very own night where we are trusted to bring and serve dinner to our fellow Alexandrians going through a rough patch—mostly folks with full time jobs just trying to make ends meet. Space will not allow for a fair list of all the great volunteers who have donated their time, talents, and creativity to cook and serve, so we’ll just say that EEC folks have been extremely generous. They know who they are and they do it for the service, not the credit anyway! Here is a very brief picture of what a night of serving at Carpenter’s Shelter looks like for EEC:

In the weeks leading up to the dinner, folks log into our signup website for this purpose. Individuals or families commit to cooking a meal, specify what that meal will be (in accordance with that month’s theme), and indicate how they will get it to the shelter. Then, it’s up to everyone to decide how they wish to create their part of the meal. Some busy folks run to the store and grab something pre-made for one of the drink or desert slots; others gather their families and plan and cook an elaborate dish, involving their children in the preparation and discussing with them the meaning of sharing with our fellow families. Other folks may not cook but commit to serving the meal and assisting with the set-up and breakdown.

As the day of our meal approaches, those whose work schedule doesn’t allow being present at the dinner get the meal to the shelter through another parishioner or just drop it off the night before.

Finally on the big night, volunteers (adults only) arrive at 5:30 PM, set up chairs, drink and desert stations, and plan how the guests will work their way through our line. At this point dedicated volunteers serve as culinary thermal engineers (i.e. figure out how to keep a rotation of dishes warm so that it will be hot at exactly the right time for dinner). At 6:20, shelter employees bring the children through the line to get kid’s plates and we try to figure out what a one-year-old’s dinner plate looks like. At 6:30, we serve the full meal to our adult guests. A line of gracious folks tell us which of the lovingly-prepared meals they’d like to try, and we scoop them up a good portion of everyone’s dishes. Meanwhile, some of our volunteers are making sure the kids and their parents are getting drinks, fruit, deserts, and can get through the line with everything they need. If we remember during all this activity, we may pause a moment to see a whole room full of folks enjoying a meal together as families and realize that we were directly able to make that happen, with God’s help. It’s very humbling. At some point, we are surprised with a very kind show of thanks from the guests taking the form of some applause and a generous announcement.

At 7:00PM the dinner is over, and the guests clean up their trays and dishes. We package up the leftovers for guests who are working late and clean up quickly. By 7:30 or 8:00, we are out the door and the kitchen awaits tomorrow’s volunteers—perhaps from another church—who will get to experience what it’s like to serve God in the simplest way, “for when I was hungry, and you gave me to eat” (Matthew 25:35).