AZ-Homeless veteran denied benefits, but is given full military funeral

[Belinda]

Hi there Belinda!
I've been homebound too for a bit, hopefully I'll be on my feet soon, I hope you're doing okay. Its frustrating not to be able to get out there...

IMO you should be very proud of your volunteer work at the soup kitchen! I've noticed that to, there are people that volunteer, but they don't want to get out and talk to people or just give more than a terse smile. I've spent a lot of time with the homeless down here and I have never been able to understand people like that. I appreciate that they want to give, but sometimes it just makes me cringe when I see the hurt in someones eyes when one of the volunteers acts like that.

And oh, I've never heard of Bea Gatty, but my friend that used to volunteer with me just moved out there recently. The pictures of the snow just blew my mind!

Take care of yourself!

I would love to be able to do it again. That is where my heart has always been. I think when volunteers do these things because its a church thing, their hearts aren't really in it. They are doing what good church people do. I was really disturbed by some of the attitudes I observed there. If someone would ask for more food, they would get all huffy and say they had to wait until the end, even though we had way more than enough food. They would actually get mad. So, if someone would ask for more, I would just go order the plate and give it to them anyway. There was no valid reason they couldn't have more and I wasn't going to tell them no. If we were stretching the food, it would have been different, but we weren't. I supplied all of the vegetables and salad for free myself and provided all the food for the bags of take-home food. I figured since I was providing a great deal of the food, I had the right to give someone another serving. Maybe I was wrong. I don't know. I just knew that I couldn't tell someone they couldn't have more food if they were still hungry. Some of those guys were pretty big guys and one little plate of food isn't gonna cut it. There were not many that asked for more food, so I didn't see what the big deal was.

It sounds like you have done a lot of work in this area. You have done some great work. I hope you are feeling better and back on your feet soon. I really need to work on increasing my physical activity, so I can work toward getting back out there. I think they really need people like us, that have the heart and caring for the people! When I was doing that, it was so fulfilling for me. I got just as much out of it as the people I helped.