The Hartsville Soup Kitchen

 Hartsville has a wonderful ministry called the Soup Kitchen.  It is open for lunch every  weekday 11:30-12:30 PM.  It is held in a building owned by Wesley Church that used to be a car dealership, many, many moons ago.  I have always wanted to volunteer

here but until this school year I didn't have an oppotunity when a friend headed up the committee from our church.

Now Hubs and I are hooked on serving there.  Today Hubs cooked his famous salmon stew.  We looked up how to cook rice for over a 100 people and the web said to bake it.  We tried it and it turned out great :)

The lady serving drinks on the left is new to H'ville.  Her husband transferred here with Progress Energy.  She says she is never leaving H'ville and we hope she doesn't.  I think she started volunteering at the Soup Kitchen the day she arrived and I think she is here almost every day.

These two lovely ladies are Donna Foster on the left and Cindy Christensen on the right.  Donna and I are in Bible Study together; she saw our post on Facebook saying we needed some help today and showed up to help.  Cindy is our church Chairperson.  Her Mom is in the hospital in Florence and she is in the road back and forth over there every day.  She is an only child and will be bringing her elderly, frail mother home to her house as soon as she is able to leave the hospital.

 

It takes five volunteers to cook, serve and clean up each day.  There is a paid director who loads and unloads all the food that is given and keep the volunteers on track.  Usually a different church serves each day of the month but six churches have cancelled saying their volunteers were elderly and unable to keep serving.  I pray others will step up to the plate.  Our church alone could serve one day a week a month with five different volunteers each time.  There are other large churches that could easily do the same.

These are some of our customers.  Today we served about a hundred people.  The customers are always polite and thank us for the food and our service.  There are no questions asked.  Any one can come for a free meal.

I count it a privilege to serve.  I see Jesus in the faces of our customers; I hope they see Jesus in mine.

 

Where are you privileged to serve?