This has to be filed under, "you can't make this stuff up".
This past Winter in the Pacific Northwest has been a pretty cold one with cold temps and record snowfall and plenty of wind.
I admit that often, I forget how truly lucky I am for what I have. I like to think that I have a good heart and want to "help out" but often, I lack the follow through. Luckily for me, Lori is better at follow through.
The timing is approximately the week before Christmas. The weather was very cold and the wind was going nuts. The wind chill was nasty cold.
We were commenting about how fortunate we were for all that we had. Lori came up with a great idea to see what we could offer. We decided to make a pot of coffee and go get 10 cheeseburgers and hand them out on that cold winter night.
We had just finished dinner. We had the thermos of coffee in hand, loaded the kids up and off we went. We went to McDonalds to get some burgers. When I placed the order for 10 cheeseburgers, I also asked if they had any "extra" food like French fries as we were handing them out to the homeless. I got the song and dance of, "they already donate blah blah blah". That's OK, we have coffee and burgers!
As we pull away from the take out window, the kids instantly decide they need more food. I remind you, they JUST ate dinner! Lori tears a burger in half, getting ketchup and mustard all over her gloves. As I am getting ready to pull out onto the highway, the kids decided they are done with the burgers. Yes, one bite each and they were done. Grrrr. I have to pull over to get the burgers back from them. That's OK, we still have 9 perfectly good burgers.
We head down the freeway to go to a park in downtown Vancouver that always has homeless people. I take a particular exit that there is always a homeless person at. They are not there. It must be too windy. Off to the park we go. You guessed it, not a single homeless person in sight. We circle the park a few times looking for people. Not a sole. hmmmm. What next? We remembered that up by an Ace hardware store, there is normally some folks there that could use some food. As I approach the hardware store, I see our first "guest". Excellent. I grab a burger and jump out. I approach the gentleman and ask if he wants a burger. He turns around and says, "that is very kind but I don't eat meat". That thought had not crossed my mind. I look over at Lori and she has a look on her face as to say, "what are you discussing? Give him the burger and lets move on." I asked the guy if he wanted a cup of hot coffee. Again, he declines. Um, OK. I asked the guy if he knew of anyone that needed a warm meal. He looks over and says, "yes, I know of a person. He takes the burger and yells over at a guy getting out of a truck and says, "hey Bob, want a burger? It is still warm!" This is NOT what I was thinking at all. The guy walks over and grabs the burger. I get back into the Honda with Lori and she is all kinds of confused. I tell her the conversation and we just howled at how it went down.
We are now down to 8 burgers and a full thermos of coffee and the kids are now drifting off to sleep in the back of the Honda. What in the world are we going to do with all of this food? We ended up calling Loris Dad. If anyone would know where the homeless are at, he would! And, he did. He told us of where the main population of homeless in Vancouver are at. We drove down there and I was shocked at what we saw. Lets just say that I am very grateful for what we have! We were able to easily hand out the food, and the coffee was a big hit.
We have since gone back to that area and handed out more food and coffee. It is a good feeling to do that for others. It is just, not what I had anticipated on our first trip doing that.
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