Locations: Saint Elizabeth’s House and Friendship Center, South Park Inn, and Cornerstone Soup Kitchen
How is it even when you’re expecting a certain outcome to a situation, you’re still blown away by the outcome? When those moments happen in life that blow you away it is a moment that you’ll never forget and it’s a stepping stone that is leading to bigger and better things. A moment that is incredible is something you won’t ever forget, regardless of what happens because the feeling that comes with that moment is something that you’re going to feel a hundred more times in your lifetime.
Day before the Event:
This weekend started off as our typical Friday night with our donation collection from Dunkin and Panera. Ashlei and I headed over to Panera Bread in the pouring rain to get our donations. We received 3 boxes consisting of treats, bagels, cookies, treats, and other pastries of sorts. After Panera, we headed over to Dunkin, and even though we didn’t get a bunch of Donuts, we got plenty of bagels and Munchkins. After wrapping them we headed back to Vernon to individually bag everything including the treats and bread from Panera. We finished packing everything up and loading up the car at around 11:15 pm. The total count for the week was 6 trays from Dunkin, 179 individually wrapped items, and 3 boxes from Panera. Each of the locations we visit was able to receive 2 trays and 1 box each sorted with the treats we gathered.
Day of the Event:
The next morning our first stop was the Cornerstone Soup Kitchen in which we dropped off a box full of cookies, donuts, and bread of sorts and we were able to bring them inside and see the inside of the soup kitchen. From Vernon, we headed down into Hartford and to the South Park Inn and dropped off the donuts and box from Panera. Once done we headed to the St. Elizabeth’s House and Friendship Center, where we were able to drop off goodies for them too.
Our shelter runs and soup kitchen runs bring us special connections with the communities we are helping because whatever type of situation the people we are helping are in, we have all been in a similar situation at some point. Honestly and truthfully we want to be open with the people we help and we want to do everything we can to help. We want more people to realize we’ve been through it too and were like them and know what it’s actually like, rather than pretending to know what it is like to be in a tough situation.
We were fortunate to be able to have a meeting at around 12 p.m. with the head of the Peace Center of CT about the upcoming event for next weekend! When meeting up with Iran, we discussed the plans for the event, but we also discussed the care packages and the different types of them he has done as well. Thanks to his help we were able to get many times for our care packages for the month of June and we learned about a few of the things he has been able to do. One of the things he does is backpacks with water bottles and the necessities inside such as socks, snacks, toothbrushes with toothpaste, masks, etc. This is one of our long-term goals, which is to create backpack care packages, so everything they need to carry or have to be kept on them, they wouldn’t have to worry about losing. Currently, we hand out bagged care packages but in the future, we hope to provide bigger and better care packages for all.
We also created a future plan to work with them on and as time passes we will definitely share more info with you guys.
This is all of an update we have for now but from our family to yours, Happy Memorial Day Weekend!
Stay Safe and Stay H.O.P.E.F.U.L.
From Dunkin before being individually wrapped! The 3 boxes from Panera, all sorted out. Box 1 Box 2 Box 3 Items from The Peace Center of CT!
