Humanitarianism

Yesterday I volunteered at the Humanitarian Center, spending four hours assembling about 1500 cleaning kits(bleach, bags, soaps, brushes, garbage bags and a nifty mask!). We ran an assembly line, and I don't remember the last time I worked that hard, moving boxes of detergent and bleach and pulling buckets and other forms of manual, menial labor. I was more sore after four hours than from spending all day working my way through a canyon.

But it felt good to be serving. I kept thinking of the people in Bangladesh which were affected by the cyclone. Thousands dead, 270,000 homes destroyed, but over 650,000 homes damaged. I tried to think of how welcome it would be, with stores sold out for miles, to have one of these cleaning buckets delivered to your house. I don't know if ours will be sent there or not, but the center made over 5000 yesterday (a record, by the way, for four shifts) and some day, some where, they will do some good.

So it was a contented soreness, the kind that comes from good work well done. And while I nearly strained my shoulder patting myself on the back, I was compelled to think about how little service I actually do, and I committed to trying to give a little more. It's only cleaning supplies. But spending four hours to assist in helping 1500 people--beats watching a football game.