RED Day

Yesterday was a really special day. I'm lucky enough to work for a company that believes we all need to take a break from what we're doing and give back to our community. Yesterday was Keller William's national RED Day...Renew Energize and Donate. Our Georgetown office decided to take on a few different projects. We started our day at the Senior Citizen Center. We were picking up meals to deliver to shut-ins, and while we were waiting on the meals to be ready, we visited with some of the people that were there. Now, I'm not very good working with elderly people, and I think it's because I've never really been around them. My mom had me when she was 20, so my grandparents were young, and are just now in their 70s and still very healthy. But I think it was good for me to get out of my comfort zone. You could tell they enjoyed talking to us. They just come there to socialize, get out of the house and they can eat lunch there. There was also a woman who comes to do exercises with them to help keep them active. They have a bus that picks them and up drops them off if needed. I did find my "old person" self while we there. There was a group of 3 women in the back of the room gossiping and when we went back to talk to them they were cutting up and picking on one another, they were cracking me up. None of them wanted to go do their exercises...they were so funny.

Here we are sorting the meals to be delivered. Our group delivered about 12 meals throughout Georgetown, Katy and myself delivered 5 of those. There were also 2 other regular volunteers there that took meals out. I kind of thought maybe the people receiving the meals would want to chat, but they didn't. Katy did know one couple we delivered to, so we talked to him for a little bit. After delivering the meals we all broke for lunch ourselves and then headed over to an elderly woman's house to wash some windows and sweep her front porch off. This was especially rewarding for me. You could tell she was so appreciative of just these small tasks, that probably took us all of twenty minutes to complete.

And here we are with Miss Irene. Such a sweet woman.

Last night we all met back up at the Community Medical Mission. This is a great program I just learned about a couple of months ago. A local doctor, Dr. Culbertson, started this center (along with much help from the community) about a year ago. This is a free service offered to Scott County residents who have no health insurance, medicaid or medicare. I wouldn't have guessed there would be such a need for this, but there is. There are several working families whose companies don't offer insurance, but because they're working they don't qualify for medicare. The Health Department donates their facilities every Thursday from 5:30-7:30. Everyone that works in the CMM is volunteering their time, even the doctors and nurses. There were 2 doctors there last night and probably 5 nurses. We all checked patients in, made files, appointments cards and any other "general" task that they needed. What I thought was really cool, was a young 13 year old girl who works there every week. Her mom is a nurse that seems to pretty much run the CMM, and she's there with her every week, and she said they come almost every night to do something, whether it's filing, calling patients or scheduling appointments. She was the main one that showed us what to do. It was refreshing to see a young person there helping others, she was fun to talk to. We also had one man taken out in an ambulance who came in complaining of chest pains. I couldn't help but think if the CMM hadn't been there, would he have seeked medical attention?

I think yesterday really meant a lot to all of us. We've talked about trying to help with at least one of these projects every month, hopefully that will happen. I think it's important for all of us to take time out of our lives to give back to those around us.