Southern Night Dinner
“Do you want to know who you are?
Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.” Said by Thomas
Jefferson. This quote is a great way that sums up how I put my service to feed
the Veterans at Veterans Village. I took action and decided to help, talk, and
serve my community in an honorable way. It made me feel amazing and I loved the
people I got to talk to while serving these heroes. My time was not wasted in
this amazing project that my teacher does as extra credit. My job made me feel
important and that I was actually making a small change in the community.
My beginning thoughts on when
signing up for this dinner would be just bringing food or going out and making
food these crippled, nursing-home style veterans. My beginning motive was to
just do this for extra credit and move on with life, but then as I looked into
what I had to, my mind began to shift into a more heartfelt motive. The meal’s
theme was Southern BBQ. Others had already signed up to bring the big meat
parts of the meal so all that was left was to get sides. I could not really
think of any good side dish to make besides coleslaw since it can be made
overnight or that day. I went to the store the morning of the event and bought
all the ingredients to make my yummy, traditional coleslaw. I put apple cider,
mayonnaise, honey mustard, salt pepper, the chopped lettuce called coleslaw,
celery seed, a little bit of special mustard (it contains the mustard seeds in
it), and then my excellent mixing skills. I made two, large trays and drove to
the college town looking building to serve my delicious coleslaw. Then, the
small group of people that were already there and myself started to set up how
the men and women were going to get their food. We came up with an assembly
line. We had one section that was the dinner side, a drink side, and then a
dessert side. The people lined up and everyone was either putting their supper
on a plate or putting a nice dessert plate together for them. We filled plates
until all the dinner was in a box. We smiled and talked to the wonderful
veterans while they got their yummy food, and once everyone was gone, our group
made extra plates to be stored. We cleaned up the kitchen, threw trash away,
and left the building cleaner than when we came to it. The last thing we did
was take a cute selfie with our teacher and said good-bye to the veterans as we
left the area. We worked hard, but the time flew by fast. It was a great
experience to be able to serve the many vets.
I think my core values of being kind
always to people, show a smile to brighten up the day, and just showing God’s
love in everything you do helped me really open my heart. It helped me think of
how courageous these men and women fought for our country to keep our freedom.
It made me feel that even the simplest of tasks of just making food and smiling
could make a huge difference to someone’s life. It helped me to get out of my
little comfort zone because in the beginning I did not feel as open to talk or
really look at anyone, but to just get the task done. So the helping and
feeding the veterans really helped me be more comfortable with talking to
people and being as helpful as I can to not just my classmates, but to also the
veterans. My skills as a person probably including kindness, charismatic, and
being able to not freeze up while doing a job. After opening up to some
classmates by asking them how they are and what kind of degree they are going
for helped me go into serving food easier. I would have stayed quite the whole
time if I had not pushed myself to say hi to anyone or asked what I needed to
do to help out. When the veterans did start to roll in, I was so happy and
loved chatting with them about how they were doing and what their favorite
dessert was to have to eat. I think my skills of cooking were appreciated
whenever a vet asked what I brought. They would complement me and tell me they
thought it looked yummy. It was a
gateway on having a conversation with them, which I feel helped me be more
engaging in the whole service. These skills and values helped me have a great
time serving and loving on others in a very simple way.
This service project is amazing, and
I do not understand how everyone did not want to jump onto this project. This
is a great to get involved into your community and to use your services in the
best and kindest way possible. People should, especially in college, get to
know their community better by either going to spend time at nursing homes or
by serving food to the veterans. This project is a great to start and to continue
doing this service work because it does make a difference in the lives of the
veterans and your life. It make my day feel a lot more productive and better.
It made me feel happy knowing I had done some good into the community. I highly
recommend this project to anyone because it helps others and puts their need in
front of yours.
. It was great to cook, talk and learn from others why they chose their
degree and how people’s days are going. It gives you a sense of happiness and
excitement. I loved my short time doing this project and I hope this project
stays around a long time so that others can enjoy it as well. I hope I will get
to have a chance like this again in the future.
