“Hi would you like cranberries or fruit?” is what I asked over 200 times to over 200 people! I had went to Chicago for a mission trip this past summer; we went to a food service place. When we had first got there, the boss told us what to do and how to hand out the food. Handing out food to people in Chicago was a scary thought because I didn't like the idea of talking to complete strangers. It was really cool since we were passing out food that the people didn't even have to pay for. I was glad I was in a group with people I got along with; it was Yoni, Elana and I who passed out food together. We were all around the age of 13 and 14 and had to be in 7th/8th grade.

We first started off by unpacking about 2 boxes of the food that had to be passed out. I had dried cranberries and fruit, Elana had Cereal and rice and Yoni had black eyed peas and beans. The sun was setting so it was getting cooler and it made it feel refreshing to be outside when it wasn't about 80 degrees. We had to ask them which one they wanted, they couldn't have both. The foods we had there were fruits, vegetables, chicken and then what we had passed out. Around 5:30 they opened the doors for the people to come outside. The smell of the fresh fruits and vegetables made me think of home. I remember the first person was a grown man in a wheelchair.

“Would you like black eyed peas or beans?” asked Yoni.

I’m pretty sure he picked the beans because most people didn't choose the peas. Then he came up to me.

“Hi would you like cranberries or fruit?” I questioned quietly, holding up the bag of cranberries and the can of fruit.
“Fruit please,” he responded.

The man proceeded down the line to Elana and she asked “Would you like rice or cereal?” When he picked which one, she ended with a “Have a nice day!”

I said to myself, I don’t think this will be so bad.

A couple people started to come down the ramp to get food then all of a sudden there was so many people, there was only one way to walk out. Most of them were nice but some of them could have be more nice. It was really cool because there were so many different accents in Chicago. It made me think about how many different cultures there is. To name a few, there was Chinese, Russian and Spanish. You could say they were as different as day and night. There was also some strange smells but that’s alright. We passed out food for maybe over 3 hours. The sun had set a little while ago and could hear the chirp of a nearby cricket in a bush.

Once a couple of hours had passed and we had gone through boxes and boxes, it was over. There was over 200 people who had got food so looking over and seeing all the empty boxes sit there, was such a relief. I was as happy as a fish in water. We didn't get to eat any of the food because it was packaged for the people. I thought this was actually really fun and would have kept going but I was just a little happy it was over. Throughout this experience I had gotten used to talking and meeting people in Chicago. I would love to do it again and see how it changed the visitors. I thought, I can't wait to do this next year.