Serendipity

We are working at the Oregon Food Bank this week and today we were put to work! It is great to feel really needed at an organization and they have plenty of work to be done!. The food bank is huge, supplying the entire state of Oregon plus Vancouver with food for local agencies. Oregon is #1 in the nation for the highest % of hungry people and has one of the highest unemployment rates.

This morning we got a tour of the amazing facilities (over 80 full-time people) and then bagged oats for a couple hours. In the afternoon we helped with Fresh Alliance, a program where local grocery stores bring in fresh produce every afternoon to be redistributed to the greater Portland area. Normally they have four volunteers who do this every afternoon and it takes them about 3 hours to sort, on average, 4,000 lbs of food. We were there today with another one-time volunteer so there were 9 volunteers instead. We worked for 2 hours and 45 minutes in order to get the food sorted and repackaged. After we were done, Amanda (a volunteer coordinator) told us how it was 'serendipity' that the 5 of us just happened to be there...she told us it was the second largest shipment of food in Fresh Alliance history--8,709 lbs we sorted and boxed! With the normal amount of volunteers they wouldn't have gotten it done... Perhaps it's 'serendipity,' but I'm more inclined to think that God has a much more detailed planner than we give him credit for.

Kelly