By Gustav Hollnagel—Today was my third time of participating in the annual community service event “Into the Streets”. Before I get into any details about today’s community service I’d like to say that I feel special to be part of this institution that allows us all to give a helping hand to the community.
A few members of both tennis teams, myself included, first went to the Children’s Development Center. They were not prepared for the help we came to provide, which was odd because how tough can it be to mark up October 3 in your calendar?
So we absent-mindedly went through the volleyball field they had just filled up with sand and picked out some rocks that could potentially cause some physical damage. A few of us also cleaned windows, but we knew we weren’t going to stay there for long.
After some quick phone calls we made our way over to the “Mission of the Messiah,” a small store that takes donations and engages in fair trade and thrift to provide older but useful things to people who cannot always afford new furniture or silverware or even mattresses and clothes. We helped them to get some more donations into their truck from across town and brought them down to their storage facility.
Except for the driving back and forth across town it was really good to feel needed. Most of the bigger stuff could not be moved had it not been for our strong hands. In the end we met up with some other Morningside helpers who carried out old TV’s and hospital beds from the Sunrise Retirement Community. Around noon, we had moved 8 hospital beds and a few TV’s, plus loaded the storage truck with more tables, microwave ovens and other items.
We were only supposed to be “working” until noon, and some of us got hungry from carrying all the stuff around. At their shop, the Messiah people had prepared egg sandwiches, cookies, fruits, chips, and drinks to compensate us for our efforts. One lady even gave me a bag of ginger cookies and some egg salad to take home because she made way too much.
After all, those three hours of community service felt like giving back to the community. It’s great to see the work people do for others and not for their own benefit.
I encourage people to stop by at the store on Correctionville Road. They have some cool looking stuff there, I promise. But wait until I went back there to save myself some pretty wine glasses, those are mine! Hope you think about stopping by there some time.
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