The Meaning of Service
Earlier this year, We Will Go’s leadership team sat down to collaborate and define our core values. One value that we all agreed on unanimously was service but not for the reasons you might think. We are an organization that depends on volunteers to help our programs operate each day, and we encourage people to come serve with us all the time. We all agreed that service should be a core value because of how serving others has impacted each of our
lives. Mark 9:35 says “He sat down and called the twelve. And He said to them, “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and a servant of all.” Jesus encourages us to serve each other, like he did time and again.
One day, almost 4 years ago, I decided to work at We Will Go full-time after participating in We Will Go’s food distribution program. I was in graduate school and my post-grad plans were falling apart. I was looking for an outlet to give back or help someone in an effort to re-center myself. That day I came to volunteer, I met a grandmother who had what seemed like a mountain of problems stacked against her. Her daughter was battling addiction, she and her husband had taken in their grandson, and her husband had just been diagnosed with cancer. I asked her how I could pray for her, and she simply asked me to pray that her husband would not die. What struck me most was that she saw all these problems, but her main prayer was to not have to face them alone. She definitely had more faith and strength than I did. She helped me realize that there are people in my neighborhood with real problems that need help now. Serving that day helped me think about how I could share the love of Christ in my everyday life. My mindset and goal since I was in high school has been “I want to do something that helps people.” I am very grateful that We Will Go provides me with that opportunity.
More recently, we have been working through how to best staff our food distribution program. During the summer months, our Camp Hope program takes a lot of manpower, which tends to leave our food program understaffed. A lot of times neighbors will say things like “this is amazing, I’d love to come help sometime.” We started following up and sharing the need. I have been absolutely amazed by the response from our community! We have had several neighbors who receive food from our pantry sign up to come back and volunteer with the feeding program. Each one of them said that they do not have money to give, but they do have time. Service is something everyone can do, in a way that is significant to them.