On Wednesday, March 21st, The INN officially closed the main office, the Mary Brennan INN and the Center for Transformative Change, due to reports of treacherous weather conditions. Our staff and volunteers had other thoughts in mind for our guests. Check out the full story told by Assistant Manager Jason Tessler…
I just want to give an update of today’s events. We opened the soup kitchen at 8:00am and the Wednesday volunteers were not outside as usual. That’s when the reality set in. It was explained to the guests that we were only going to give out bag lunches. Around 8:30am we had close to 30 guests inside. We decided that we were going to make a soup, at least the guests would have some kind of hot food to warm up. As Jean and I were setting up, three volunteers showed up, which was completely surprising to me since we were technically closed. At that moment, the day would change for the better. We dove into the walk-in refrigerator and pulled out everything we could find to make a hot meal.
150 guests were served a hot meal with soup, coffee and tea. We also gave out 175 bag lunches.
We would like to give a special thank you to the volunteers that helped make this happen, Luanne Dresher, Kalpesh Soni, and Karen Riddick.
Christian Aguilera, Joseph Willis and Jean Victor, thank you for your support. I feel fortunate to have all of you on the team. With the odds stacked against us, seven people were able to help feed 150 guests a hot meal.
The reality of the guests thanking us for thinking of them and coming to serve a hot lunch, helps remind me of how fortunate and blessed I am.
Sincerely,
Jason Tessler
Assistant Manager,
Mary Brennan INN
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