By The Cartwright Family
On Saturday, March 2, Mount Carmel hosted our spring Mobile Food Pantry. Over 50 Mount Carmel volunteers came together to provide food to nearly 70 families in our community. We partner with IPM for this event and Mount Carmel donates about $2000 to IPM annually, which they use to purchase food given away at the Freestore Food Bank. On this week’s blog, we’ve invited the Cartwright family to share their experience while serving as a family at last weekend’s event.
Over the last couple years, our family has had the privilege of helping with the mobile food pantry hosted by IPM (Inter Parish Ministry) Food Pantry and Mount Carmel Christian Church. As a family, we were looking for a way to give back and the mobile food pantry provided a good opportunity to not only give back to the community but provide lifelong lessons to our children.
To make the event run smoothly, it requires many people who are completing different roles to achieve a single outcome, similar to how a church operates. We found this out rather quickly as the first time we volunteered. Our family had signed up to load the cars with food. However, the food truck was late that day so between the four of us, we got to experience each of the different roles available.
When the food truck arrives, it is time for the work to get started. IPM provides us with a thorough breakdown of how much of each item is allotted per family. We break into sections and start bagging the food and staging it for easy transport to the vehicles. It is amazing to see everyone jump in and help wherever they can. When one group of people finish, they jump in and help the other groups complete their task, tear down the boxes or clean up and get ready to serve.
It’s then time to load food into the vehicles. The families drive down the line, stopping at each section and we load their car with food. This part involves many different jobs. Traffic guides, greeters, and people loading the food are all needed to make this run smoothly. The back-to-school pantry requires even more hands as backpacks loaded with school supplies are given to the kids so they can start their school year off right.
Finally, it’s time to clean up. We help load the pantry truck up with everything that is left over, make sure all the recycling and garbage has been cleaned up, and put away any tables we may have used. While all of this has been going on, another very important job has been going on down the line of vehicles waiting to enter the pickup line. Serving donuts, coffee, and hot chocolate! This is a spot our girls navigated to our first-time volunteering and look forward to serving in this role each time.
This experience started as a way to give back as a family, but it has also been deeply rewarding on both a personal and spiritual level. For my husband and I, it allows us to serve within our faith community. We enjoy meeting more of our church family and building relationships. It strengthens our faith through service and involvement; supporting the church’s mission to love our neighbor. For our girls, it is so much more than a way to develop character and increase their foundation in faith. It provides a sense of purpose while developing self-confidence and social skills.
Our girls absolutely love helping at the mobile food pantry. Every time it rolls around, we ask if they want to volunteer, and we get an enthusiastic “yes”! They both say it is so much fun. If you have been thinking about a way to give back either as a family or as an individual, we urge you to consider volunteering for one of the mobile food pantries.
The Cartwright Family
