There were two shifts of missionaries who helped at the Feast of Sharing on Wednesday. The first shift worked in the kitchen helping to get all of the food that had been prepared over the previous days down to the main serving area.
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| The kitchen crew takes the elevator up to the kitchen. |
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| Hair nets in place left to right: Elder Teuscher, Elder Wright, Elder Watson, Elder Cottrell and Elder Martin. |
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| More hair nets left to right; Elder Nowlin, Elder Walker, Elder Pearson, Elder Gleed and Elder Edwards. |
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| Sister Joost and Sister Jones |
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| Sister Hazen and Sister Lewis with Elder Teuscher looking on. |
Everything the missionaries worked on was boiling hot: like the sweet potatoes.
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| Sweet potatoes with marshmallows are covered to move from the kitchen to the serving area. |
One dish that was served is probably less familiar to those who've grown up in the west: collard greens.
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| Sister Hazen and Sister Lewis find how helpful it is to work as a team. |
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| Chef James scoops out the greens and Elder Martin takes care of the serving tray. |
The stuffing was also hot and ready to serve.
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| Sister Joost, Elder Teuscher and Elder Nowlin assembly line the baked stuffing. |
They made gravy by the boat load.
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| Elder Edwards insures there are no lumps in this gravy. |
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| Elder Gleed looks on while the gravy is poured into a carrying container. |
Sterno was used to help keep the food warm once it was on the serving table.
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| Elder Kerby an Elder McClane check all of the sterno cans. |
The last thing that needed to be cooked was mashed potatoes. All of the food was donated by Safeways.
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| Elder Greiner and Elder Kuddes look over the rows of potato flakes that will be made into mashed potatoes. |
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| Elder McClane "mashes" potatoes into the containers. |
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| Elder Wright stirs a pot of mashed potatoes. |
This shift went from 9 - 12. At the conclusion, the missionaries got to eat some of the food they'd helped to prepare.
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| Cleaning up at the end of the day - left to right: Elder Watson. Elder Nowlin, Elder Pearson, Elder Kerby, Sister Hazen, Elder Cottrell, Elder Teuscher, Elder Kuddes, Sister Joost, Elder Gleed, Elder Wright, Sister Jones, Elder Edwards. |
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| It felt good to sit and rest and eat with other volunteers. |
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| More of the kitchen crew. |
The second shift arrived at 9:30 and stayed until 2:00 in order to serve the people.
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| Servers in front left to right: Elder Rodriguez and Elder Hatch. Back row left to right: Elder Hansen, Elder Pawlenchuk, Elder Rocza, Elder Palmer, Elder Lee, Elder Bigelow, Elder Shinost, Elder Stewart |
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| Left to right servers: Sister Marcy, Sister Quintanilla, Sister Avelar, Sister Matsumori, Sister Welch, Sister Wong and Sister Cadenhead |
There were 40 missionaries assigned to serve the meal. While that seems like a lot of people, we were just a small part of the number of volunteers there. Our assigned part was about one sixth of the area.
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| The missionaries assigned to serve in the Salvation Army sponsored section take a picture with Liz O Dell and her guide dog Buttercup. Liz was our contact with the Salvation Army. |
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| More group pictures including other Salvation Army volunteers. |
Because of our location, which was at the front of the conference center next to the stage, we were acknowledged frequently.
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| The emcee at one point asked for "all you elders out there to come on stage". And then he asked that the "sister elders" come up, too. |
Here are additional pictures of those who were serving. It was difficult to capture them in action. They were the wait staff, bringing soft drinks, plates of food and taking orders for pie. They also cleaned up and reset the tables. Most of the tables were turned twice.
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| The 2011 Mrs. DC was there to welcome attendees. She stopped by to visit with some of the missionaries - left to right: Elder Lowry, Elder Robinson, Elder Janmohamed, Elder Bodily, Elder Johnson, Elder Dillon, Elder Fowles and Elder Miles. |
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| Elder Fowles demonstrates his prowess with an empty serving tray. The wait for food was long. |
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| Elder Bigelow checks to see what he can do to help those at his table. |
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| Mayor Vincent Grey is on the stage addressing the attendees. |
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| Elder Shurtleff and Elder Hatch help serve the pies. |
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| Elder Lambert and Elder Johnson are closest to the camera. You can see other missionaries in the background. Our assignment was to serve those sitting in the "purple section" - or with purple table cloths. |
The Feast of Sharing, which annually helps the needy in the DC area, was featured on the front page of the Metro section in the Washington Post newspaper. If you squint, you can see one of our missionaries in the upper left hand corner of the picture, also with bowed head as a local pastor gave thanks before the meal. The paper reported that 4,000 people were served this day.
