How do you make soup for 600?

How do you make soup for 600?, originally uploaded by lalapapawawa.

In Atlanta, MLK weekend is a big deal, maybe like it is nowhere else. On Monday, people from my customer's company will gather in darkened parking lots. They will team with Hands On Atlanta as they do each year. They will will get t-shirts and their orders for the day. They will meet at schools and nursing homes and parks. They will paint, clean and plant.

My employer does not do this. If I want to be out for MLK Day, this Monday, I will need to use a vacation day. So this morning, I woke up at 5:30am. Was I reluctant? You bet. Mollie heard the alarm, wiggled up next to me and rested her head adoringly on my belly.

You don't have to go somewhere, do you? her expression seemed to say. Mollie, let's stay here where it's warm. Help me think of an excuse to skip today.

Tell them I ate your homework. I will take one for the team. But then came the text message: ARE YOU UP? I replied: AGAINST EVERY FIBER OF MY BEING. My friend Stacy answers: JESUS LOVES YOU.

So I drove to a dark parking lot, met up with 4 others, and we drove into the city. We took our own aprons, we took our own potatoes, we took our own knives. Our task? We made soup. It was my first time.

The Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Atlanta runs what they have named the St. Francis Table. If you go to their website and look at their ministries page, you'll find a lot to be impressed with. They run this ministry on Saturdays, and in partnership with another church across the street, they run a night shelter for men, which includes a running club, a yoga class and a footcare ministry. Why a soup kitchen on Saturdays? Well, in their own words: ...there was a void in food for the hungry on Saturday. Monday through Friday, St. Luke’s provides food to the hungry, on Sunday, Trinity Methodist provides food, but there was nothing available on Saturday. As a result, St. Francis Table was started to feed the hungry each Saturday.

They take donations for this Saturday meal. There were platters of pizza and desserts. Those go in bags for the guests to take with them for later. But with their funds, they also purchase meat and other items from the Atlanta Food Bank. And that's what goes into the soup.

So today, I shredded chicken and steak and pork and some potatoes. It all went into the pot. And when it was time to dish it out for the guests, we poured the soup over noodles and wild rice from some of the fancier restaurants in Atlanta to end up in styrofoam cups. Normally, they'd go into bowls and the guests would have a sit down meal served by volunteers. Today there were some scheduling conflicts, so the guests were fed buffet style.

Did this event change my life? Hard to say, because I was struck by how ordinary it was. Today I made eye contact with homeless men, some whose only disease was hunger, some whose diseases extended deeper than that. But they didn't look away and neither did I and when they realized I wasn't afraid of them, some shared a smile with me. And we were ordinary together.

And that's how we made that pot of soup really stretch.

--Laura