There’s a family that comes to the soup kitchen regularly. The mom has four children, all under the age of six. Tonight, two of them came running in the door, greeting me in their usual manner of yelling: “Hi best friend!” Their brother, a five-year-old, brought me a flower he had just picked from a neighbor’s yard. It’s so nice to be recognized and adored.

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I just read something that says “Every time a child changes schools, it sets them back 3-6 months.” Some of our children at the soup kitchen or Kids Cafe change schools often – and many because their parents are unable to continue paying rent or utilities at a place. Often, we hear from parents that the electricity/heat bill is through the roof in winter because the apartments they are staying in are not adequately quipped for Erie’s winters, i.e. they have broken or old windows or too little insulation. Yet several landlords haven’t fixed the problems because the residents pay for heat so landlords don’t know or don’t care to make changes to better winterize the house, which would bring tenants’ costs down, which would in turn allow tenants to stay in places longer than they currently do.

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Lately at the food pantry, we’re giving out dark chocolate that comes in a small wrapped package that looks like a thin bar of soap – one that you’d get at a hotel. A week or so ago, a woman came in and, upon receiving another piece of chocolate said, “I really like this soap but it smelled a lot like chocolate when I used it…”

This morning I went to Erie High School and talked with their teachers about poverty, homelessness, and hunger in Erie, a topic the faculty is very familiar with since the school services many families struggling with poverty. The teachers had an in-service day, so all were there – about 60 or so. We talked about the cycles of poverty that some of the students might be experiencing and how this poverty comes about. “Are these people just lazy?” I asked the teachers, addressing a common myth. “Not all of them,” a teacher responded. “Some struggle to just take care of basic human needs: like fulfilling hunger and finding a place to sleep each night. If they’re solely focused on these basic needs, how will they ever be able to move ahead in life?”

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Today I spoke to participants at SBEC, St. Benedict Education Center, about the services of Emmaus Ministries and how they can benefit if they need food. One of the men was pretty quiet except when I began talking about the Kids Cafe. “My children go there,” he said, “and it’s been wonderful for them. I really recommend it.” A woman sitting next to him said, “My son and I just moved here from Pittsburgh. He’s an only child and I’ve been looking for something for him to do after school. This looks like a great option.”

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Tonight at the soup kitchen, there was a mother with five small children. The youngest was a baby in a car seat, the second youngest was in a high chair. As I was pouring their drinks, the middle child proudly announced to me: “We have two babies!” So I replied: “That’s wonderful. I don’t have any babies.” She looked at me. “You don’t?” she asked. Then she said: “You will! A baby will come in your belly!”

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I am so impressed with one of our volunteers, Ann, who helped a regular guest we have that’s going through a gender transition. The guest is transitioning from female to male and has changed his style and his name and his pronouns already. But Ann didn’t know all that yet and wasn’t quite sure how to address the guest. So when the guest came in, she said: “Is your name still Jenny?” The guest said no and told her his new name. Ann said: “Okay” and began to address him according to his gender identity. Not only is this an appropriate and kind way to interact with someone who identifies as transgender, it’s also a beautiful testament of how our volunteers accept our guests as exactly who and where they are each day.

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“Every woman should know where she lives and her phone number,” said Sister Rosanne Lindal-Hynes to a husband of a woman asking for some help. Sister Rosanne was trying to elicit information from her but the woman doesn’t speak English and couldn’t answer. Her husband speaks English but says his wife doesn’t learn well. “Why don’t you want to talk to me?” He asked Sister Rosanne. “Do you not like men?” Sister Rosanne responded: “I am an advocate for women and I believe each woman should be able to speak for herself.”

“It’s not just that the food here is so good,” said a guest, “but it’s also a nice atmosphere. So nice that I would even bring a date here!”

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Phil dropped off a tub of money that he used to collect change in. It wasn’t very big – maybe the size of a piggy bank. When Margaret counted the money, she was surprised. “There was $658 in there!” she exclaimed. That’s a lot of change. And that’s especially a lot of change to donate to Emmaus – thanks to Phil for caring.

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Very regularly, one of the older Benedictine sisters sends money. “Here is a small share of my abundance,” she wrote, “for the poor and needy that you serve so lovingly and with such care. With my gratitude, my prayers, my love.”

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“I am 84 years old,” says the note that came to Emmaus after the latest Annual Appeal, “and I only live on Social Security which I receive only once a month. Not very much. I am all by myself. No one to help me. Will send at least $5 later on. God bless.”

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Students from one of the local Catholic schools made colorful placemats for the guests of the soup kitchen. One guest held his placemat up and said: “If I had my own place, I’d hang this on the wall.”

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Someone asked Fr. Leo to say a mass for his mother and offered a donation. The priest said: “I’ll say the mass if you send the offering to Emmaus instead.”

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Today a woman at the food pantry asked for a glove. “Just one,” she said, “because I only lost one glove.”

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Yesterday, I got to hold a tiny baby at the soup kitchen. He was only 11 days old.

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Union workers at GE are on strike because they cannot come to a just agreement with Wabtec. Rob, a union leader, called Sister Mary and asked if we could help some of the families get food. “Of course we will help you all,” she said, “you’ve done so much for and have been loyal to Emmaus for many years.” When she got off the phone, she addressed the office saying: “We’ll open the food pantry an extra day for them if necessary.”

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Right when he walked in the door, all the volunteers noticed: Greg – one of our loyal guests – had cut off his long beard and straggly hair. “My mom was my hero,” he said, “and this was her death day. I cut my hair in honor of her. She never liked it when I had a beard!”

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In addressing the staff at an Emmaus meeting, Sister Mary reflected on her frustrations of the way the poor are often treated. “They’re barely able to choose anything for themselves. Everything they get they have to ask for; and they don’t get to choose what they will get.” For example, even at the soup kitchen, the only thing guests can choose for themselves is what dessert they get. Everything else is picked for them: we choose the meat and the potatoes and the vegetables the guests will eat. It made me think about all the choices I take for granted.

Emmaus is sometimes a place family members meet: for example, tonight at the soup kitchen we had two sets of twins! One set is four, the other 12 years old. They are cousins and told me that twins run in their family. Both families I have seen before, but I’ve never seen them in the family dining room together. They were thrilled to see one another, the older girls just as happy to be models for the younger ones as the younger ones were happy to be coddled by the elders.

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I’ve been going through a lot of past newsletters, news articles, and pictures in preparation for our Volunteer Appreciation Brunch. Here are a few things that have struck me… how young the sisters looked when they first started! How many different volunteers have helped out over the years. How many different places the soup kitchen has moved to over the years. How steady the numbers have been, staying around about 150-225 guests per evening at the soup kitchen for years.

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This morning I heard on the radio that less than half the world lives on $5 or less a day. Five dollars or less. Five dollars buys what in Erie? A burger and fries at McDonalds? Two bus passes – one to work and one back home? Yet this half of the world is still surviving. How they find the ambition to do it, I have no clue.

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Soup kitchen weekly volunteer, Cindy Liotta, and I talked with two religion classes at Mercyhurst University. Our presentation was entitled “Feeding the Hungry: Graces and Challenges.” After introducing what Emmaus Ministries does, we talked with the students about some of the common struggles our guests encounter – like mental illnesses and addictions, homelessness, joblessness and underemployment – and how society has often failed them. Then we talked about some of the common myths of poverty and poor people: “is it okay to tell people in poverty to just ‘get a job’?” we started with and debunked quickly, by again talking about how we’ve experienced poverty affecting our guests. We used Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to do so. “When one’s basic needs, like having adequate housing, food, clean water, clothing, and safety are not met, one is unable to think of anything other than fulfilling these needs,” we discussed with the students. “How is one supposed to get a job if she is unable to find a safe space to sleep and store her belongings before and during an interview, unable to take a shower or wash her clothes to arrive at an interview presentable, unable to think of anything other than where her next meal will come from and arrive with a growling stomach, and unable to offer a phone number or address for which the interviewer can call her back?”

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“I’m so hungry,” said the person on the phone. “I’m so glad you answered the phone. Please, help me. I’m so hungry.” We don’t get calls like this often. I mean, people will call and say they are hungry or that they need something – but rarely do they say so bluntly and so desperately: “I’m hungry!” They usually just say: “We ran out of food.” or “We need help with food.” For some reason, hearing the basic need for food addressed in the blunt and honest desperate way of: “I’m hungry” is so much harder to hear.

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Today I talked with a donor. “We started giving to Emmaus when our children grew up and left the house,” she said. “At that time, we realized we had money left over from our grocery bills and decided to donate that to the Soup Kitchen.” What a great idea!

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One of the children at the Kids Cafe has visited the Emmaus Grove Garden. “Remember the carrots I picked there?” she asked when she saw me. “They were soooooooo good!”

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Today the Nuns on the Bus came to Erie. They are on the road to Mar el Lago, FL in hopes of bettering the tax policies and getting people to vote in favor of a just tax policy, where the poor are not overly taxed and the extreme rich let off easily. One of the speakers was a woman from Erie who has struggled with health issues. When she was younger, she had a great job with wonderful benefits and upward mobility opportunities. Then she got sick. At first, her health benefits covered the costs of her surgeries and whatnot. But then the doctors told her she wasn’t able to return to work. She lost her job. And lost healthcare because no one would take her with a pre-existing condition. Then she was a “burden” to society; she couldn’t cover her costs so tax payers were covering her cost. With the creation of the Affordable Care Act, she finally had help again with healthcare insurance and could have the procedures needed and began feeling better enough to work some. If the ACA is extinguished, so will her healthcare. This is how easy it is to go from a well-paying job with great benefits to poverty and desperation: one severe, unexpected illness.

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Today I got to use something I learned in college – I had an entire conversation in Spanish with a woman on the phone!

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“You always remember us at holidays,” said a guest of the soup kitchen when a volunteer handed her candy for Halloween. “Thank you.”

Today, two children from the soup kitchen came into the Emmaus Grove Garden. They were so excited to pick carrots and tomatoes – but weren’t as excited to pick the green beans. Running from one bed to another, they gathered a few pounds of veggies to take home. As they left, I heard them tell their mother: “Mom, we need to get a garden at our house!”

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Since the end of June, over 180 individual women have called Emmaus asking for help with paying rent or other bills in order to keep their families in a stable living situation. One hundred and eighty!

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Kellen celebrated his second birthday this week. Last year, he celebrated his first birthday at the soup kitchen with us. His oldest sister remembered. “Remember?” she said to me as I brought them cake, “Everyone in the room came over and sang to him! We should do that again!”

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Katie is only a year old. She comes to the kitchen with her blended family. “She LOVES you!” Her brother said to me across the room when Katie wouldn’t stop turning to look at me while she ate her food. Her mom laughed. “It’s true,” she said, “Katie gets really excited to see you.” Hey, isn’t it great to have a fan club of preschoolers?

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Late last month, Janelle (one of the guests at Emmaus) had her baby! I was just thinking about her… I knew she had been pregnant and was due soon, but I couldn’t remember the exact date when she was due. The first day the family came back to the food pantry, the baby didn't come because she was a preemie. The hospital chose to keep her in the NICU for a few days. They’re also worried she might have been born addicted to something, so they’re keeping her to watch for that, too. The second time the family came, the baby came along. The volunteers were so excited to see such a tiny baby. "Let's feed that mother an extra hamburger!" one of them said. "We want to make sure the mom's getting enough food to keep that tiny baby growing!"

Somedays, I listen to the voicemails we get in the office and I just want to weep. I’m devastated by the amount of suffering so many women in Erie live with day to day.

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The food pantry’s truck broke down. That means that the volunteers weren’t able to use the truck to get the food from Second Harvest to distribute at the pantry. “Do we need to close for the day?” people asked. “No,” said Sister Karen. We have to feed the people who are expecting us. Karen thought quickly, renting a U-Haul truck and picking up the food that way. Because the truck didn’t have a lift, Karen and two volunteers lifted out each crate of food by hand and moved it into the food pantry. When all was ready, the food pantry was able to open just a half hour late. Talk about prompt and dedicated service.

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The children are going back to school today. Last week, we had several requests from families for help with school supplies and uniforms.

There’s a family that comes in every once and a while. They have ten children but they don’t all always come at the same time. Today every kid was present so after they ate, we lined them up in order of age and Sister Mary took a picture of them. We promised to print off pictures and give them to the family to keep. The mom was delighted. “We have pictures of some of them individually,” she said, “but we’ve never had a picture of all of them together before!”

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This morning I met a young mom and her one-year-old child who need help. I invited them to come to the soup kitchen for dinner. “We would come,” the woman said, “but I don’t like to be around the men. Whenever I go places, men always try to give me their number or make crude comments. I don’t want to go somewhere with lots of men.” This devastates me. She doesn’t feel comfortable going out to get the things she needs because her fear of a few men’s lewd behavior. “I’m so sorry,” I said, “but I do want you to know that we have a family dining room where you and your son can eat in peace.” But even if they can eat in peace, that doesn’t mean she won’t be approached in the food line or on her way to or from the kitchen.

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Things seem to usually work out at the soup kitchen, as if directed by some invisible organizer who plans things to work out just perfectly. For example, this morning a regular volunteer called and said that unfortunately this month her group would be unable to make and deliver deserts. Not a few minutes later came another call from a mother saying: “My son and mother-in-law decided to made cupcakes for the guests at your soup kitchen. When can we drop them off?”

I enjoy addressing thank you notes to our donors. I’m fascinated by the amounts people donate, too. Emmaus receives everything from $1 and beyond. The donations of $1 – and there are a few – make me think a lot about my own sharing: if I share just $1 each time I think about people in need, I really could make a difference over time.

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I hate catcalls. I’m a human, not an object. I don’t want to be treated like an object – and I especially don’t want to be treated like an object of men’s pleasure when I’m walking down the street or performing my job. That said, when men yell out to me on the street, I often ignore them or offer them some kind of gesture that says “I’m not interested; don’t treat me like your object.” Today I was taking the dog for a walk in the afternoon. A man biking by yelled out to me. “Hey!” he yelled. “How you doin’?” I looked at him skeptically, ready to show my disinterest in his advances when I then heard him say: “Did you work at Emmaus tonight?”

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On top of emergency food, here are things we often get asked for: bus tickets; help paying rent; help paying electricity and fuel bills; furniture; and help finding emergency shelter. We have to remind those calling that we are an emergency food agency and can’t always help with everything else – but it is difficult to talk to people on the phone each day who need so much help with basic necessities, knowing that we can’t always help.