Ordinary People Doing EXTRAORDINARY Things
S
By J. P. Garner
UNDAY MORNINGS COME QUICKLY FOR BATINA WINGO. On these days she’s at the Church of God In Christ by Riverside Drive in Barstow at 0600 sharp. She’s the Energizer Bunny of HELP Outreach, Inc., who leads the non-profit though you’d not know it from her as she rarely mentions her role as President. She avoids drawing attention to herself.
Instead, on the non-profit’s Facebook page, she calls out the volunteers who, on their assigned Sundays, gather at the church where, in the kitchen and a meeting room next to it, they regularly heat up and assemble 500 meals to distribute to the homeless and disadvantaged who circumstance or misfortune has displaced in the streets of Barstow or one of its motels. The acronym “HELP” stands for Hearts Extended by Loving People. She’s been performing that mission since 2019 when feeding the homeless and disadvantaged was part of the weekly shower program offered by the church. Back then, anyone in need could take a 15-minute shower, eat a meal, and leave with a sack lunch prepared by Batina’s group. Nowadays, the meals are delivered. But before that happens, the prep happens and that takes time. It started today at 0730 with Marsha Johnson in the lead. She stepped in for Batina who was in Las Vegas supporting her sister who lost her son. Marsha focused on bringing out the frozen chicken donated by KFC and lining the pieces in metal pans. They’d be reheated in the oven. I helped too by washing the pans in which the rice is prepared and then dousing the rice with hot water and inserting them in the ovens above the chicken. Afterward, I assembled the
bread rolls wrapped in aluminum foil. It was easy work but it felt good. Better I think than the things I do on most days. I was struck by the fact that what the volunteers to the program donate is time. And what I wonder is more valuable than that? Certainly, the donations of food and money make their work fruitful but the donation of time—time possibly spent with family or, given that it is a Sunday the work is performed, time spent in church, practicing their faith. But then I realized what better way to practice their faith than to do the work of the Lord. To do, as St. Francis of Assisi once suggested, “Preach daily. Use words when necessary.”
As I assembled the bread rolls, I thought about the man I saw curled up in a sleeping bag on the sidewalk next to the fitness center on Yucca. I pulled to the curb and called out to him but he didn’t stir from his slumbers. Perhaps he was finally warm and sleeping and refused to wake. I hoped we’d find him later when we went out into the streets and delivered the 4-500 meals being prepared. The streets aren’t empty in the early morning. They are populated by the homeless who can be seen wandering about, perhaps looking for someplace warm or they’re so hungry and cold they cannot sleep. Moving, if only aimlessly, helps them set aside what they cannot forget—what they always remember: the time they were home and warm—the time they mattered.
PULSE PUBLICATIONS
In the dim light of dawn, they walk the streets seemingly lifeless and without hope. The Bible says the poor are always with us but it is the people I see volunteering for HELP Outreach that give those without hope a gift of kindness— that, however small it might seem to us who have plenty, is large to those who have nothing. It is that I see in the work performed by the volunteers who, on this Sunday, have gathered at about 1:00 in the afternoon to assemble the food that has been cooked in the morning. Marsha altered the menu by adding red beans to the rice and a KFC biscuit to some of the meals. There’s always chicken, mixed vegetables, and mashed potatoes and gravy—and often a treat from Panera Bread. There’s water too. A ton of it. And maybe just as important as the food, there’s always a kind word and a smile offered up along with the food that, if only for that moment, reconnects the homeless and disadvantaged to that which often shuns them: the human race. The homeless might be invisible to us—a minor distraction as we exit the Walmart or the drive-thru at the Del Taco on Mountain View, but not to Mike, the retired construction worker, whose devotion to his son’s dream finds him scouring the streets of Barstow in his Toyota truck every Sunday or to elevenyear-old Aria who, when you listen to her talk, sounds like she’s going on thirty. Goodness knows not age or color, only the heart of the ordinary people who labor in anonymity and without recompense. They are what’s best about us—what’s best about humans in general but especially what is best about Barstow. When you see the joy they bring to their work—their passion to serve—it is not a stretch of the imagination or the English language to describe them as ordinary people who do extraordinary things. January 2024
13
