More Than Words: Stories of Hope

by Diana Palmer; Kasey Michaels; Catherine Mann

  When she got off from work, she went to the restaurant where the assistant manager had given her the leftovers, and she spoke to him in private.

  “It’s just an idea,” she said quickly. “But with all the restaurants in the city, and all the hungry people who need it, there should be some way to distribute it.”

  “It’s a wonderful idea,” Cecil replied with a smile. “But there’s just no way to distribute it, you see. There’s no program in place to administrate it.”

  “Perhaps it could start with just one person,” she said. “If you’d be willing to give me your leftovers, I’ll find people to give them to, and I’ll distribute them myself. It would be a beginning.”

  He found her enthusiasm contagious. “You know, it would be a beginning. I’ll speak with the manager, and the owner, and you can check back with me on Monday. How would that be?”

  “That would be wonderful. Meanwhile, I’ll look for places to carry the food. I already have at least one in mind. And I’ll get recommendations for some others.”

  “Do you think you can manage all alone?” he wondered.

  “I have three children, two of whom are old enough to help me,” she replied. “I’m sure they’ll be enthusiastic as well.”

  They were. She was amazed and delighted at her children’s response to the opportunity.

  “We could help people like that old man at the shelter,” Bob remarked. “He was much worse off than us.”

  “And that lady with the little baby. She was crying when nobody was looking,” Ann told them.

  “Then we’ll do what we can to help,” Mary said. She smiled at her children with pride. “The most precious gift we have is the ability to give to others less fortunate.”

  “That’s just what our teacher said at Christmas,” Bob said, “when he had us make up little packages for kids at the battered women’s shelter.”

  “That’s one place we could check out, to see if they could use some of the restaurant food,” Mary thought aloud. “I’m sure we’ll find other places, too,” she added. “It will mean giving up some things ourselves, though,” she told them. “We’ll be doing this after school and after work every day, even on weekends.”

  Bob and Ann grinned. “We won’t mind.”

  Mary gathered them all close, including little John, and hugged them. “You three are my greatest treasures,” she said. “I’m so proud of you!”

  Monday when she went back to the restaurant, Cecil was grinning from ear to ear. “They went for it,” he told her. “The manager and the owner agreed that it would be a wonderful civic contribution. I want to do my bit, as well, so I’ll pay for your gas.”

  She caught her breath. “That’s wonderful of you. Of all of you!”

  “Sometimes all it takes is one person to start a revolution, of sorts,” he told her. “You’re doing something wonderful and unselfish. It shames people who have more and do less.”

  She chuckled. “I’m no saint,” she told him. “I just want to make a little difference in the world and help a few people along the way.”

  “Same here. So when do you start?”

  “Tomorrow night. I’m already getting referrals.”

  “I’ll expect you at closing time.”

  “I’ll be here.”

  Mary was enthusiastic about her project, and it wasn’t difficult to find people who needed the food. One of the women she cleaned for mentioned a neighbor who was in hiding with her two children, trying to escape a dangerously abusive husband who’d threatened to kill her. She was afraid to go to a shelter, and she had no way to buy food. Mary took food to her in the basement of a church, along with toys and clothes for the children that had been provided by her employer. The woman cried like a baby. Mary felt wonderful.

  The next night, she took her box of food to the homeless shelter where the elderly man was staying. The residents were surprised and thrilled with the unexpected bonanza, and Bev, who ran the shelter, hugged her and thanked her profusely for the help. Mary made sure that Meg, the young woman with the baby, also had milk, which the restaurant had included two bottles of in the box. The elderly man, whom Bev had told her was called Sam Harlowe, delved into the food to fetch a chicken leg. He ate it with poignant delight and gave Mary a big smile of thanks.

  On her third night of delivering food, after the children had helped her divide it into individual packages, Mary decided that there might be enough time to add another restaurant or two to her clientele.

  She wrote down the names and numbers of several other restaurants in the city and phoned them on her lunch hour. The problem was that she had no way for them to contact her. She didn’t have a phone and she didn’t want to alienate her motel manager by having the restaurants call him. She had to call back four of them, and two weren’t at all interested in participating in Mary’s giveaway program. It was disappointing, and Mary felt morose. But she did at least have the one restaurant to donate food. Surely there would be one or two others eventually.

  She phoned the remaining four restaurants the next night after work and got a surprise. They were all enthusiastic about the project and more than willing to donate their leftovers.

  Mary was delighted, but it meant more work. Now, instead of going next door to get food and parcel it up, she had to drive halfway across town to four more restaurants and wait until the kitchen workers got the leftovers together for her. This meant more work at the motel, too, making packages to take to the various shelters and families Mary was giving food to.

  It was a fortunate turn of events, but Mary was beginning to feel the stress. She was up late, and she was tired all the time. She worked hard at her jobs, but she had no time for herself. The children were losing ground on homework, because they had less time to do it.

  What Mary needed very much were a couple of volunteers with time on their hands and a willingness to work. Where to find them was going to be a very big problem.

  She stopped by the homeless shelter to talk with the manager and see if they could use more food, now that Mary was gaining new resources. Bev was on the phone. She signaled that she’d be through in a minute. While she waited, Mary went to talk to Mr. Harlowe, who was sitting morosely in the corner with a cup of cold coffee.

  “You still here?” Mary asked with a gentle smile.

  He looked up and forced an answering smile. “Still here,” he replied. “How are you doing?”

  She sat down. “I’ve got a place to live, clothes for the children and this new project of distributing donated food in my spare time.”

  He chuckled. “With three kids, I don’t imagine you’ve got much of that!”

  “Actually, I was hoping to find a volunteer to help me.”

  He lifted an eyebrow and took a sip of coffee. “What sort of volunteer?”

  “Somebody to help me pick up and deliver the food.”

  He perked up with interest. “The last time you delivered food here, Bev said something about what you’ve been doing. But she didn’t go into specifics about how all this came about. Tell me more.”

  “I’ve discovered that restaurants throw out their leftover food at the end of the day because they can’t resell it the next day,” she explained. “I found five restaurants that are willing to let me have what they don’t sell.” Her eyes brightened as she warmed to her subject. “And now I’m looking for places to donate the food and people to help me carry it and sort it into parcels.”

  “You’re almost homeless yourself, and you’re spending your free time feeding other people?” He was astounded.

  She grinned. “It helps me to stop worrying about my own problems if I’m busy helping others with theirs. Feeding the hungry is a nice way to spend my spare time.”

  “I’m amazed,” he said, and meant it. “I don’t have a way to go…”

  “I’ll come by and pick you up in the afternoons before I make my rounds,” she promised, “if you’re willing to help.”

  “I’ve got nothing else
to do,” he replied gently. “I don’t have anything of my own, or any other place to go except here,” he added, glancing around. “They haven’t tried to throw me out, so I suppose I can stay.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Bev laughed as she joined them. “Of course you can stay, Mr. Harlowe!”

  “Sam,” he corrected. “Call me Sam. Do you know about Mrs. Crandall’s new project?”

  “Mary,” she corrected. “If you get to be Sam, I get to be just Mary.”

  “And I’m Bev,” the older woman laughed. “Now that we’ve settled that, what’s this project, Mary?”

  “Remember I told you I discovered that restaurants throw away their food at the end of the day,” Mary said.

  “And they don’t save the leftovers….” Bev said with a frown.

  “They can’t. It’s against the law. So all that food goes into the garbage.”

  “While people go hungry,” Bev mused.

  “Not anymore. I’ve talked five restaurants into giving me their leftover food,” Mary said. “I’m carrying some to a lady who’s in hiding from her husband.”

  “Doesn’t she know about the battered women’s shelter?” Bev asked at once.

  “She does, but she can’t go there, because her husband threatened to kill her, and she doesn’t want to endanger anyone else,” Mary said. “She’s trying to get in touch with a cousin who’ll send her bus fare home to Virginia, before her husband catches up with her. She’s got two kids. So I’m taking her food. There’s an elderly lady staying in the motel where we are, and I take some to her. But there’s still so much food left over. I thought you might like some for the shelter,” she added hopefully.

  Bev smiled from ear to ear. “Would I!” she exclaimed. “Have you thought of the men’s mission and the food bank?” she added.

  “Men’s mission?” Mary asked blankly.

  “It’s another shelter, but just for men,” Bev said. “And the food bank provides emergency food for families in crisis—where one or both parents are sick or out of work and there’s no money for food. Or disabled people who can’t get out to shop, and elderly people who have no transportation and no money.”

  Mary started to feel a warmth of spirit that she’d never had before. Her own problems suddenly seemed very small. “I’ve heard of the food bank, but I never knew much about it. And I didn’t know we had a men’s mission.”

  “There’s a women’s mission, too,” Bev told her. “We have a Meals-On-Wheels program with its own volunteers who take hot meals to elderly shut-ins. There’s quite an outreach program, but you wouldn’t know unless you’d been homeless or badly down on your luck.”

  “I’m ashamed to say I never knew much about those programs, and never noticed them until I got into this situation,” Mary confessed. “But now I’m wondering if there wasn’t a purpose behind what happened to me. Otherwise, I’d never have been looking into the restaurant food rescue.”

  “It’s nice, isn’t it, how God finds uses for us and nudges us into them?” Bev teased.

  Mary’s eyes shimmered. “I don’t think I’ve ever thought of that before, either,” she said. “But whole new avenues of opportunity are opening up in front of me. You know, I never knew how kind people could be until I lost everything.”

  “That’s another way we fit into the scheme of things, isn’t it?” Bev said. “Until we’re caught up in a particular situation, we never think of how it is with people in need. I was homeless myself,” she said surprisingly, “and I ended up in a women’s mission. That opened my eyes to a whole world that I’d never seen. When I got involved trying to better the situation of other people in trouble, my own life changed and I found a purpose I didn’t know I had. I became useful.”

  Mary grinned. “That’s what I’m trying to become. And so far, so good!” She glanced at Mr. Harlowe. “I’ve just found a willing volunteer to help me parcel up and pass out food.”

  Bev’s eyebrows lifted. “You, Sam?”

  He nodded. “I do think I’ve just become useful, myself,” he said with a chuckle. “I can’t lift a lot of heavy things,” he added hesitantly. “I had a back injury from service in Vietnam, and it left me unable to do a lot of lifting.”

  “The food parcels the children and I have been making up aren’t heavy at all,” Mary was quick to point out. “We try to make sure we have bread, vegetables, fruit and meat in each one. And dessert, too. But that was only from the one restaurant. With the four new ones added, we can make up larger ones.”

  “You’ll need containers,” Bev said. “I know a woman at one of the dollar stores who’s a good citizen. She contributes paper plates and cups to our shelter, and if you go and see her, I’ll bet she’d contribute those plastic containers for your project.”

  Mary, who’d been buying such things herself, was surprised and delighted at the suggestion.

  Bev had a pen and paper. “Here. I’ll write down her name and address for you. And I’ll see if I can find you one more volunteer with a car and some free time.”

  “That’s great!” Mary exclaimed.

  “You borrowed a car, didn’t you?” Bev asked. “Does the person who loaned it mind if you use it for this?”

  That was something Mary hadn’t asked about. She bit her lower lip. “I don’t know,” she confessed. “I’ll have to go and see her and ask if it’s all right.”

  “That may not be necessary. We have a patron who has an old truck that he’s offered to donate to us,” Bev volunteered. “I’ll ask him if he’s still willing to do that. You might talk to one of the independent gas stations and see if they’d donate gas.”

  “Bev, you’re a wonder!” Mary exclaimed.

  “I’ve learned the ropes,” Bev said simply, “and learned how to get people to follow their most generous instincts. After you’ve been in the business for a while, you’ll be able to do that, too.”

  “I never knew how many people went to bed hungry in this country,” Mary commented. “I’ve learned a lot in a few days.”

  “Welcome to the real world.”

  Sam sighed. “Well, then, when do we begin?”

  “Tonight,” Mary said enthusiastically.

  “Wait just a minute,” Bev said, and went to the phone. “I want to see if I can get in touch with our patron before you go.”

  Amazingly she did, and he promised to have the truck at the shelter promptly at 6:00 p.m. that evening.

  “Thanks a million, Bev,” Mary said.

  “We’re all working toward the same goal,” Bev reminded her. “Go see that guy about the gas, okay?”

  “I’ll do it on my way back to the motel.”

  Mary stopped by the gas station, introduced herself, mentioned Bev, and outlined her new project. “I know it’s a lot to ask,” she said, “and if you don’t want to do this, it’s okay. I’ve been paying for the gas myself…”

  “Hey, it doesn’t hurt me to donate a little gas to a good cause,” he told Mary with a chuckle. “You bring your truck by here before you start out tonight, and I’ll fill it up for you. We’ll set up a schedule. If I’m not here, I’ll make sure my employees know what to do.”

  “Thanks so much,” Mary told him.

  He shrugged. “Anybody can end up homeless,” he commented, “through no fault of his or her own. It’s the times we live in.”

  “I couldn’t agree more!”

  Mary told the children what was going on, and how much work it was going to be. “But we do have a volunteer who’s going to help us with the deliveries,” she remarked. “It will mean getting up very early in the mornings to get your homework done, or doing it at school while you’re waiting for me to pick you up.”

  “We could stay at the homework center until you get off work, instead of you coming to get us as soon as school’s out,” Bob suggested.

  “Sure,” Ann agreed. “We wouldn’t mind. There’s a boy I like who’s explaining Spanish verbs to me,” she added shyly.

  “This will work, I think,
until we get some more volunteers,” Mary said with a smile.

  “We want to help,” Ann said. “It’s not going to be that much work.”

  “It’s sort of nice, helping other people. No matter how bad it is for us, it’s worse for many other people,” Bob agreed. “I like what we’re doing.”

  Mary hugged them all. “When they say it’s better to give than to receive, they’re not kidding. It really is. I feel wonderful when we take these packages out to people who need them.”

  “Me, too,” Ann said. “I’m going to do a paper on it for my English class.”

  “Good for you!” Mary said.

  “We’re doing okay, aren’t we, Mom?” Bob asked gently. He smiled at her. “Dad didn’t think we could, I’ll bet.”

  The mention of her ex-husband made Mary uneasy. She’d been afraid at first that he might try to get custody of the children, just for spite. But perhaps he didn’t want the aggravation of trying to take care of three of them. Mary had never minded the responsibility. She loved her children, she enjoyed their company. As she looked at them, she felt so fortunate. Things got better every day.

  That evening, she and the children went to the homeless shelter to pick up the donated truck.

  “Can you drive it?” Bev asked worriedly, when she noted petite Mary climbing up into the high cab of the big, long bed, double-cabbed vehicle. It was red and a little dented, but the engine sounded good when it was started.

  “I grew up on a farm,” Mary said with a grin. “I can drive most anything, I expect. I’ll bring it back, but it will be late, is that okay?”

  “If I’m not here, George will be,” Bev assured her. “You keep the doors locked and be careful.”

  “Don’t you worry,” Sam Harlowe said as he climbed up into the passenger seat. “I may be old, but I’m not helpless. Mary will have help if she needs it.”

  “Sure she will,” Bob added, chuckling. “I play tackle on the B-team football squad.”

  “Good luck, then,” Bev called to them as Mary put the truck in gear and pulled out into the street.