Leftover Night!

Okay, learning how to cut some recipes down to two servings is hard enough, but even more difficult is trying to guess how many servings Michael will eat each night! Some nights it is barely one, and other nights it's at least three! My estimates were off once again this week, so tonight I am designating as "leftover night" because I hate to see that food go to waste! Michael has this thing though where he won't touch leftovers unless someone else prepares them for him and doesn't tell him ahead of time that a leftover is what he will be eating! So, shhhhh!!! Don't tell him it's a leftover night!

This was my first "week" of classes. It was really only three days, and I have only one class a day! Yesterday I was at the shelter for five hours, and today I was there for three. I did my first screening on a potential resident! The shelter is such a nice place to work because it's so laid back there! If you make a mistake, it's no big deal at all! Yesterday was interesting because the volunteers in charge of the soup kitchen lunch at the shelter couldn't come, so all of us case workers got to stir five gallons of chili and slice cucumbers covered in ants (don't worry, we did wash them off first!). Then we found some leftover (HA, that word is popping up a lot today!) hot dogs which we sliced up in and threw in the chili. The meal ended up being "Chili-dog-cheese-fries" which were actually quite good, with a side of cucumbers, tomatoes, potato salad, and donated Fred Meyer sheet cake. The soup kitchen aspect of the shelter is open to the public for breakfast and lunch five days a week. The shelter's residents are served dinner as well. It's really low key compared to the Lebanon Soup Kitchen, where a food handler's card is required to work with the food and 10 people are needed to keep the stomachs fed at a fast enough rate. We were able to serve our clients with just 3 petite social workers preparing and serving the meal!

I can't share details about any of the clients at the shelter, but I would like to request prayer for these families! Some of them need so much help getting back on their feet, and I hate it when we just don't have the resources to help them! I feel so blessed that Michael and I got such a wonderfully comfortable start to our life together!