13: May 19, 2007 - Serving Breakfast

Early on Saturday morning, a few of our hearty souls met to travel to Alphabet City and work at the Father's Heart Ministries soup kitchen where we helped serve breakfast to 478 guests.

2007-05-19 Soup Kitchen

Breakfast was served for an hour and a half, and guests are allowed to eat as much as they would like. Our guess was that on average, each guest had 3 or 4 plates of food, so that means that Haley placed about 1700 fork-and-knife sets onto plates, and Jessica and Juan set over 160 place settings during the morning.

Think about that for a second ... this is generally not a soup kitchen for the homeless, but rather "food insecure" people on the Lower East Side. 478 people were fed in an hour and a half - all they wanted to eat. Men, Women, family's with children, people that should be enjoying their "golden years" all sharing a meal together in this corner of God's Kingdom. Probably in the neighborhood of 140 DOZEN eggs, plus toast, sausage, hash browns, peaches, coffee, and juice. Though their food handling license doesn't allow it, a few guests packed this bountiful food in order to eat later.

While the youth prepared the tables and plates of food, the leaders (Jill, Stephanie, and Mark - where was David?!?) were asked to minister to the guests: roaming, smiling, talking, listening, and praying with those that the spirit lead us to.

Father's Heart is a robust and well-organized ministry. Worship (presented in 6 languages, including sign language), prepared food, food pantry bags, roaming ministers, ESL courses, social workers available, and somewhere around 60 volunteers for the morning to make it all happen!

This is one that we recommend going back to again.