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chicken with rice or potatoes, and deliver them to a mission (or call, and someone who volunteers at the mission will pick these items up). The cost for this donation would be less than fifty dollars, but these pans can conceivably feed no less than ten people at one sitting when
combined with other donations each mission receives, and again, the effects are immediately realized.

Almost every firehouse & police station have donation boxes, as do grocery stores. Usually people are great about putting something in these boxes, but more often only at Christmas, Easter & sometimes Thanksgiving. Well, every week when you go shopping, add three things; a large box of instant rice, ($5-7), 1 or 2 large cans of either soup or vegetables, like tomatoes or green beans or corn ($3-5), 1-2 large containers of shampoo, ($5.) family packed bars of soap, ($8-12 for up to 15 pcs). Toothpaste, ($6 for 3 large tubes), deodorant, cleaning products or paper products
{TP or plates, etc} cost $4-6 for up to two of each item. Extra bonus can be found by using the coupons provided in your weekend newspapers. By spending less than $20.00 each month, you help ensure that a local mission or other similar facility can keep their doors open, but they can also more easily continue with the work they have all volunteered to do; these are the people who actually do work for no pay, because they donate their time. An example with which I am personally familiar is "Stuff a Sailor". Half of the program involves 'adopting' a military member from the one of the base facilities in and around military bases, the men and women
of the US military who are far away from their own families during almost every holiday of their tour of duty, so families sign up and take that service member home for a holiday. The second and lesser known half of this program is to spend at least one day of each holiday at a mission, helping to cook & set out a meal for anyone who comes through the doors. Again, there is the direct gratification of seeing your effort, time and money put to use.

Finally, for my most revered pet peeve: the general public likes to take for granted that police, fire department personnel, and other civil servants will be there when they want one, but hate it if one of those servants isn't there in the blink of an eye. I also hear, constantly, about how "little" the police are doing about certain situations. Perhaps the public should be made more aware of a couple small facts; {a} if you do not file a police report for something that has happened to you, or it happened to someone and you were a witness to it, then technically, NOTHING happened. See, how can the cops act on an event that has not been reported? Think for one minute, and parallel a fire; if you see it, it's a fire, right? But if you don't call the fire department, there is no fire (officially) - they can't just guess that there is a fire someplace, someone has to tel them about
the fire, where it is, if it is a building or a haystack, etc. The cops are the same, because they cannot act on an incident if it is not reported; they can't just assume that your black eye came from an assault, you have to tell them someone socked you in the face. (After all, you could have 'run into a door').

No matter what, if a few more people can open their minds and think along these same lines, we can move forward into a better future; it still won't be perfect because nothing on this planet truly is, but we can get closer if we simply stop whining and at least make some effort. If you don't like a law, write to your congressmen, gather a petition, and most important, inform yourself and vote when you are called.
DaisyB - Liesyl Simonot

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