On September 6th I participated in the Stockton Day of Service for the first time. Beginning at 8 in the morning, the Day of Service volunteers gathered in the Campus Center for a brief check-in and then formed groups of various sizes inside the event room. Each group had a different destination (on- or off-campus) and was run by a different organization, but each one had the same goal in mind: to help our community by giving our time and effort toward those in need.
A sign at one of the tables in the event room caught my eye: Christian Ministries Thrift Store. I have never been in a thrift shop before and I was automatically interested in seeing what it might be like, so I chose to volunteer with that group for the day. When the volunteers and I arrived at the store in Northfield, we began our day of service by hanging baskets down the aisles and along the ceiling. Later we moved on to clearing shelves, dusting them off, and then bringing VHS movies to the front of the store for better visibility. We made sure to keep the Disney movies down low for small children to easily see. Once we had finished all of the jobs that the store clerk had initially given us, we began a general organization of the store by putting similar items together to make for a better presentation of the merchandise. We did this for the remainder of the day.
I generally enjoyed the fact that I spent my day at this thrift store helping the elderly store clerk complete these tasks because she wouldn’t have been able to do them on her own. However, I took something else away from Stockton’s Day of Service as well: the items in this store are things that I have in my home and down in my basement, never to be used again. When I saw how the costumers purchasing these items truly needed them to help make their lives easier, I realized how fortunate I am to actually have the problem of ‘excess’ anything. I’m a million times more grateful for what fortune I have in my life now that I’ve volunteered at this thrift shop, and now I will definitely think of donating before throwing something out that could possibly be needed desperately by someone.