Lessons Learned from the Homeless

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My husband and I recently signed up through our church to help feed dinner once a month to the homeless people in Laguna Beach. We are both so happy that we are doing this. Not only has the experience been rewarding, but we learned a lot from it. When we arrived, the people were very happy to see us. They showed us where to park and offered to carry the food inside for us. Let me mention here that the homeless in our area receive dinner every night, served by a variety of churches in the community, so our arrival was not unique. The people were very quiet, orderly, pleasant and appreciative. There were about 70 people there and virtually all of them thanked us profusely. Several of them said, "God Bless You." The people were patient with each other and helped each other out. There was one man in a wheelchair. The others stepped outside so that one of the other servers could make him a plate of food. A few of the other people were very slow to fill their plates. No one complained and no one rushed them. Some of the homeless did not come up to the table where we were serving. Others helped them, filling extra plates and serving food to them. The people were pleasant, clean and most of them chatted with us. It was obvious that most of them take full advantage of the showers, as well as the washers and dryers at the shelter. They ate their vegetables. One of the donors had made two huge pans of broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots, covered in cheese. The dish was very popular! They also ate the salad (which I made), baked beans and rolls ... and loved the fried chicken that our group bought. I recognized some of them from my daily walks on the beach. Others, I had never noticed as being homeless before, perhaps because many of them were actually very well-dressed and well-spoken. You could tell that some of them were middle-class people with decent wardrobes who were down on their luck. When we left, many of them thanked us again, profusely. It was such a pleasant experience, we should have been thanking them. In one hour, we learned so much from them about gratitude and simple human kindness.