My Third Event

Finally, on Tuesday November 1st, I completed a last event as volunteer.

New-York-Cares. Inhabitat. December 12, 2011.

This night was very pleasant and it was an interesting event to volunteer to. We had to serve fun meal to families during Kidzone community at the Father’s Heart Ministries Center in East Village. The Father’s Heart Ministries is a faith- based, non profit , established to demonstrate God's love through practical expressions of compassion. This center is a brick-building and a neon cross “Jesus saves” sign is hang up. I just realized that my first event (pantry) was organized by a church also. So I may conclude, that because of one of the goals of the church that consists to show God’s love to others by gesture of love and support, it is important for the church to take the responsibility of organizing food distribution. And by being myself a christian I take this responsibility very seriously and I am pleased to see that our community is doing good things.


When I arrived there, a lady seated behind a wood desk was here to welcome every volunteers coming from different organizations. A lot of organizations were here this night. She had many attendance sheets in front of her. So we had to sign, and  could live our bag behind the lady she would keep them with her because she was seated here during all the event..So when I entered to the building, at my left there were stairs going up leading to the bathrooms and other part of the church. I didn’t have the opportunity to visit all the building. The room where everything had to happened was just in front of us.It was a big room with white painted walls and wood parquet floor, brown folded chairs were placed against walls and wood rectangles table were already place, ready to be used in all the room.



By crossing the room, I turned on  one turn and half on myself on my left side I could see the kitchen. A lot of persons were already there: volunteers and church people.
By keep crossing the big room, going straight ahead, there was another room.A coat rack was standing there and everybody could hang up their coat right there before to meet our leader..
My team leader was Adriana, a blond wrinkled lady with this special accent from Western country. I supposed that she was originally from Western country like Russia. But anyway, as my doctor said, here in United States, everybody has an accent from somewhere.
Adriana gave everybody ( from NY cares) responsibilities. She was in kitchen with other volunteers. They all had to wear a white kitchen hat and white latex gloves. They had to prepare foods and plates for the families.
I was assigned to the second part of the evening: the game part. The evening was divided in two parts for the kids. First they were welcomed at the entrance and were invited to seat at tables with their parents. People (as volunteer) came to serve them food, they could share a good dinner in family. Then, kids had a small sheet where the list of the games were written.
Each time they performed a game they had to receive a check mark from the game presenter (us volunteer). Once their sheet was totally filled by all the check marks, they could receive a plastic bag full of candies. There were different types of game, the goal of all was to push and encourage kids to try and keep trying to succeed the challenge even though they met difficulties. Each kid had to pass one after another.


More quick than I though I started to feel tiredness due to replace the balls again and again but I steel had to encourage those kids who missed their balls and those who succeed.

Before we finished the evening,Sandra (one of the church representatives) called all the kids to meet with their chair in front of the stage to share a moment together. She asked three kids to be volunteer.She gave them something to taste and they had to guess what it was. It looked like chocolate but seeing their face we could guess that something was wrong with this chocolate. Sandra started her speech. She said in reality those things were onions covered with chocolate. I even can’t imagine how it would taste like disgusting.  So by appearance it looked like chocolate but in reality it was something else, something else that wasn’t as sweet as chocolate at all. She compared those fake chocolate to us (human being) but specially kids here, who are not very perfect inside so we just try to cover with  good things to look good but what we had to do is to let God enter in our heart and let Him make changes inside us.


Here I was surprised. Positively surprised because being a christian I was pleased to see how the gospel was propagated to young person. Surprised because although this even thought it was organized by a christian organization I still expected that the separation between church and social work be respected (this is how it is in France). But thinking again about it I remembered that here in U.S things are different: even at the tribunal the gospel is present ( to swear on the Bible). Finally we had to clean  and fix the chairs and tables while kids were getting home with their family. I also had the opportunity to interview a young student at the end of the event.