Call To Action

My lacrosse team and I decided to volunteer at the Catholic Social House. When we first arrived there we that a lot of people were just leaving. We later found out that the reason that all those people were there was that the Catholic Social House has a community breakfast every Wednesday and Thursday for those in need. At the breakfast they give out pancakes, eggs, toast, fresh orange juice and many other typical breakfast foods.
Our task for the day was to help with their garden. The garden was dormant during the winter but has become ready for planting now that the whether has warmed up. The only problem with that was the hundreds of weeds that covered the landscape. Our job was to pick all of those weeds and to help create planter beds to plant the new crops. The House was planning on planting some strawberries, carrots, onions, and many other types of vegetables.
My team is 27 people strong and we got to work quickly. We were able to quickly pull up all of the weeds with the help of shovels and hoes. One of the hardest parts of the the job was having to turn over the hard dirt so that it could be softened for planting. Usually a rototiller would have gotten the job done in a few minutes, but unfortunately for us the group did not own one. I was covered in all the dirt that was getting tossed around from turning over the dirt. This was not my first time having to work in a garden or deal with a lot of shoveling so I was used to all the manual labor, but many of my teammates have not spent much time in dirt or near gardens and did not appreciate how dirty they were getting. Often times some of my teammates had to be showed how to use a hoe or the proper way to shovel so that they did not break the tools.
It was a humbling experience and I also think that my team had some team bonding. It was humbling because many of the families that the organization works with relies on the produce that comes from  the crops we were helping to plant. We indirectly had a huge impact on their lives. It was also good for our team because we still had to communicate with each other so that we could make sure we were pulling the right plants or doing the right jobs. It felt good to give back to the community and it was nice how much work we had gotten done. One of the volunteers had taken a before picture to show how many weeds and how bad the garden looked and then took an after picture to show the nice, newly formed planter beds and the weedless pathways. Gardening has always been a favorite of mine which is why I enjoyed our Call to Action day. I also appreciated how we got it out of the way early in the day by starting at 9am and ending by noon. Our large numbers helped us to get the job done much faster than was expected.