Sandwiches made with love
Charles H. Featherstone/Columbia Basin Herald Annalyse Hernandez and Piper Bradshaw, both members of the Moses Lake Rattlers fastpitch softball team, help fill sack lunches. The lunches are put together by a group of volunteers and given to Serve Moses Lake to help those in need.
MOSES LAKE — “Many hands make light the work.”
It’s an old saying, but it’s true, as the volunteers who gather at in the kitchen of Youth Dynamics in downtown Moses Lake every Tuesday night to make sandwiches for Serve Moses Lake can attest.
“There’s a whole group of us volunteers who just want to give back to the community and I’d like to think that we’re doing our part to help out those in need,” said Michaelle Boetger.
Boetger is pulling out slices of bread and lining them up on a big plastic cutting board. After she’s done, she hands the board to someone else to slather slices with peanut butter. After that, someone else spreads grape jelly, and someone else cuts, slices and bags the sandwiches.
The sandwiches — all 65 of them — will go to Serve Moses Lake as part of Care Sack lunches for those in need.
And helping Boetger pack these sandwiches this evening are a group of 13- and 14-year-old girls from the Moses Lake Rattlers fastpitch softball team. They fill the bags with the other goodies that are part of the Care Sacks, and then the sandwiches as they come off the all-volunteer assembly line.
Eventually, they form a sandwich chain, handing them off from team member to team member to fill the last lunch sacks.
“We’ve done this before,” said Coach Manuel Torres. “So we’re coming by again to do it for the holidays, try to help out as much as we can.”
“We’re just helping out the community, giving back,” said 13-year-old Annalyse Hernandez.
According to Boetger, her group provides the Care Sacks for Serve Moses Lake for Wednesday and Thursday, which gives out around 25 to 30 every day. Another group provides sandwiches for Monday and Tuesday. If any are left over, they will likely be given to the warming center, which has just opened.
“We’ve been getting together for the last two years, and we’ve probably made over 5,500 lunches, which is a lot,” Boetger said.
It takes a lot of bread, peanut butter and jelly to make that many sandwiches, Boetger said. The food bank provides the bread, and most of the rest is either donated directly or bought using cash donations. Because money is always good, Boetger said.
And the lunches themselves are put together by teams of volunteers, like the young women of Rattlers who stopped by this evening.
“We have a lot of partners,” Boetger said. “But we’re always looking for volunteers.”
Charles H. Featherstone can be reached via email at cfeatherstone@columbiabasinherald.com.