Service With a Smile

One of the absolutely most frustrating things I've experience over the last week has been feeling helpless and useless.  My husband goes to work every day and does absolutely nothing.  While some departments are being stretched to their limit (or beyond), others are being under utilized.

(I understand.  I know we're in a state of emergency and not everything is going to work perfectly, but it's still extremely frustrating.)

While he is at work twiddling his thumbs, "on-call", waiting to be useful, I'm stuck at home with four kids going crazy.  (My only chance to help so far has been to donate some food and clothing, and then hugging the girls and making a salad for their dinner that night!  Which was awesome.  Not trying to diminish that at all.)

So I was thrilled to hear there was something I (and lots of other similarly frustrated moms) could do yesterday.

Right now there are many large groups coming through our base helping with relief efforts.  Roxanna was  asked if she could round up some people to put together sack lunches for 200 Rescue Workers.  She said "consider it done" and called the Relief Society president.

Rescue or Relief Workers in Misawa

Together they organized a bunch of ladies to make "no-bake" cookies.
(We're not supposed to be using our ovens.  They use too much energy.)

Over $600 dollars of snack foods and apples were graciously donated.

Then, a separate group of ladies got together to assemble the bags of food while some teenagers helped out by watching the 237 kids over at Roxanna's house.  (Okay, maybe not quite that many.  But Mormon's have big families...there were lots of kids.)

Liz is about 39 weeks pregnant.  Cami's husband is deployed.

About half of the helpers
(I made cookies.  I'm only in here because I was dropping them off.)

After I dropped off my last batch of cookies, I went over to the P's to check on the kids.  The teenagers helping were totally on top of things.  All the kids were playing happily or eating snacks with a few babies napping upstairs.
The bags were assembled quickly and the packages were delivered to very grateful recipients yesterday afternoon.

It was great to be able to do something useful.  And I know all the other ladies felt the same way.

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~A Guest Post by Emily Warner.  You can read more of Emily's adventures in Japan and the aftermath of the Tsunami/Earthquake on her blog Acte Gratuit: A Look at Life in between Naps.