St. Anthony's Church (Padau Dining Room) Reflection 1 (Vida)

Vida Saffari
September 9th, September 14th, and September 16th 2017, 10am-11:30am
St. Anthony's Padua Dining Room
Bob Dehn
Supervisor Contact Information: paduadiningroom@gmail.com or 650-365-9664 

These 3 visits at St. Anthony's Padua Dining Room have been short, but extremely impactful. A group of volunteers and I have been able to provide individuals and families who are facing malnutrition and hunger with a clean, healthy meal. 

During these visits, I first started off by helping recycle the boxes of fruits and other foods that were used for each meal. I also aided St. Anthony's by organizing necessities such as toilet paper, feminine products, shampoos/body washes, and many others into compartments. These necessities would then be provided to low income individuals and families who needed them in the future. Through this process, I realized that I take for granted many of the basic aspects of my life such as having shampoo to wash my hair everyday. I loved the fact that St. Anthony's provided low income individuals with these commodities in addition to meals. 

For the rest of my visits, I helped out mostly in the kitchen. I helped prepare certain dishes, cut up slices of cake, and washed fruits and vegetables. After kitchen work, I was able to step out and serve the individuals. This was an extremely rewarding experience. It didn't take much time to prepare the food, but the impact that it made on these people was delighting. It was amazing how each individual took the time to thank me for serving them a meal and spoke about how delicious it was. Even though these individuals were facing challenging times, they still stayed positive, smiled, and remembered what they are grateful for. These are all things that I forget to do in my daily life as a privileged individual. I sometimes even forget to thank my parents for providing me with the basic necessities of life such as serving me healthy, nutritious meals. 

Watching the families smile and spend time together talking over a meal, made me realize how important breakfast, lunch, and dinner time are. Not only is it a time to give the body the food it needs, but it is also a time of connecting with the people around you and engaging in interesting conversations. I loved the sense of community that was built at St. Anthony's and it felt amazing to be a part of it.