Thanks, San Diego, for another great event--it was a momentous day!

On Saturday, May 14th, 175 FFCC volunteers teamed up with 200 of San Diego's homeless community at the San Diego Salvation Army building to package over 100,000 meals for disaster-ravaged Japan!  This was the first event of its kind in San Diego and turned out to be a tremendous success.

In addition to the 100,000 meals, 40 boxes of toys, coloring books, art supplies, puzzles, and board games were packaged and will be shipped with the food.  The estimated value of the packaged food and toys is $35,000.  What an incredible gift to the children and families in Japan!

For those of you who missed this event, this is what you would have seen: FFCC volunteers working alongside our homeless neighbors for a common purpose, to assemble meals for people in need thousands of miles away. During the hours of the event, there was no difference between us; we were all volunteers. You would have seen people empowered by the experience to give to others; you could see on their faces. Many had the opportunity to volunteer more hours than they had originally signed up for and they did so with great enthusiasm! There were several people from the STEPS and CRASH programs (people transitioning from homelessness to a life lived in the mainstream) who gave leadership to this event. People like Michael who gave direction and training to the meal assembly volunteers; and Kelley who helped the registration team by greeting and name-tagging incoming volunteers; and Chris, who worked the microphone--and gave Phil a break!--encouraging all the volunteers for doing a great job, just to name a few. It was a sight to behold. And everyone said when it was all over, "Let's do this again!

Thanks to all who helped make this possible, especially to Holy Smokes BBQ from Green Oaks Ranch in Vista for providing a fantastic lunch to all the volunteers and to ACE Parking for genorously offering protected parking to volunteers for the day!