I’ve always considered myself lucky to have grown up in a small town, and now I am excited to be raising my daughters in a small town. Yeah, there are not many places to eat, but we learn to cook, we know how to entertain ourselves, and we know pretty much everybody.
When it came to choosing my service project, the first thing I knew for sure was that I wanted mine to be in Winters. It’s been a while since I worked in Winters, but when I did, I used to deliver Meals on Wheels. I enjoyed getting to see everyone on my route smile when I brought their food, or answer their questions, or just have a little laugh. Therefore, I chose Meals on Wheels, which has changed quite a bit. We used to cook the meals in Winters, then deliver them, rotating each week by church. Now, Abilene’s Meals on Wheels Plus has taken over our community when we didn’t have the means to continue. We still rotate weekly by church, but each day is also rotated as far as who drives to Abilene to pick up the meals for Winters and Ballinger. Ballinger meets us in Winters to get their meals, and they pick up every Wednesday. My mother-in-law and I went together to get the meals on Tuesday, which gave us an opportunity to spend time together. While it makes you a little sad to think of these people in their younger days (I knew most of them before they were “elderly”), it also made me so happy to see that they would be waiting by the door, on the back porch, or watching their favorite T.V. show because that means they are doing good! My grandparents recently moved into a nursing home because they don’t know who we are and can’t take care of themselves, and because my grandfather had his mind the longest, he wanted to take care of my grandma and wouldn’t let us get them Meals on Wheels.
I also joined my dad at Lion’s Club that week, something else I haven’t been able to do in quite a while. The program was given by Larry Collom, one of our EMTs. He and his wife who is also an EMT had gone down to Houston as some of the first responders. It was amazing to hear him tell the tales. They were often the first people at the shelters and helping transfer people to hospitals, or to the doctors and nurses set up in the shelter who could render aide to these people. One of the shelters had an entire makeshift ER setup. The thing that stood out the most was not the amount of people, it was the people who were there by themselves. Anytime they moved or were transported, they’d grab both their trash bags to carry with them, which were now all their possessions.
Our Sunday School subsides during the summer months, and starts back up again after school starts. We’ve added an extra classroom this year so I can continue teaching the kids I had last year without holding them back for the younger kids in the class, and I am stoked. We are learning the meaning behind Lord’s Prayer, how to use the Bible, and have the same weekly Bible Lesson as the other three classes. One of my Sunday School students is the daughter of Emily’s kindergarten teacher.
I love that I know the people I deliver meals to, I love that I can join a Lion’s Club meeting just to hear a good program, I love teaching kids in Sunday School that I know.