It was a cool Wednesday afternoon school had just ended. It was a perfect day to go out with my friends to play basketball; I didn’t get any homework and should have had the rest of the day free. However my English class required ten hours of community service per semester, and I needed to use this chance to complete my hours. I was going to go to St. Vincent de Paul with some of my classmates and teachers. St. Vincent de Paul is a nonprofit organization located in Phoenix, Arizona dedicated to serving the poor in a plethora of ways.
Once we arrived we were greeted by one of the head volunteers, and she explained to us what we were going to do. The guys were assigned to the unloading docks to unload trucks full of donations to be sorted, and the girls were going to work in the diner as servers. From there me and the rest of the guys were led to the docks were we saw bins full of furniture, clothes, and electronics. My palms were sweaty as Jose, one of the dock workers, explained the unloading process; it was a torrent of information in such little time, and I didn’t want to mess anything up. In about ten minutes we had gotten the hang of it and were finishing trucks like we have had been working there all our lives.
After a couple of hours we finished our work at the docks and were called in to help finish up at the diner. At this point I was exhausted of all the heavy moving. But what I saw next was even worse. What I expected to see when I walked into the diner were the stereotypical homeless people you see in the movies not it to be filled with families. Every table was full of parents with small children getting something to eat. I never really thought that a family could get into a situation like this. It made me think about that these kids probably go through out their day hungry. This is when I realized how fortunate I am for what I have. We finished up in the diner by cleaning up all the tables and throwing away the trash. Even though we were all tired we felt good because we know we helped out a lot of people. Once I got home I was happy that my class required that community service because without it I would have not gotten such a great experience.