Moses Lake – Ten jars.
On a Tuesday evening in mid-April while she was making sandwiches, Peanut Butter Michael Boetger did just that.
One hundred and seventy sandwiches. 170 bags for lunch.
It’s something that Boetger and a group of volunteers who call themselves Care Moses Lake have been doing almost every Tuesday since 2017 to provide a simple sack lunch—a peanut butter sandwich, a can of apple Small cup, a bag of chips, a snack, and a small box of juice – to organizations that hand them out to locals facing homelessness.
“We’ll be done in about 30 minutes. So it gets pretty fast,” Boetger said as she smeared peanut butter on six slices of whole-wheat bread on a cutting board. “We have a system down, and I think we’ve made 25,000 sacks of lunch in six years.”
The system is very simple.
After Boetger finished with peanut butter, Amy handed the large plastic cutting board to Dana, who spread globes of strawberry jam on the other slice. When Dana was finished, she handed it to Pam Nordin, who put the two slices together, then handed them to Susan White, who put the sandwich in a resealable plastic bag. From there, those sandwiches were passed on to Grace Meiners, who sealed the bags and placed them in plastic containers.
It’s a small assembly line of sandwich-making in the kitchen at the Moses Lake Elks Club, which is replicated in the dining room as more volunteers take the sandwiches and place them in paper sacks with chips, apple sauce, and a treat like a granola bar. put. Boetger said they can make, fill and pack 170 sacks of lunch in about 20 minutes.
Because the old adage is true – many hands light up the work.
“It’s a service I can do when I bring my kids and they can help,” Nordin said.
“All these people are my regulars. They come here every Tuesday, and I can really count on them,” said Boetger, who owns a graphic design business.
Boetger said it has become Care Moses Lake in 2017 after seeing an online request from Save Moses Lake — the support and outreach organization of the Moses Lake Ministerial Association — to provide sack lunches for Serv Moses Lake customers.
“And I thought I could do that. So I rallied some friends and urged some businesses and community members to pay for the supplies, and so, for the past six years, we have been doing this,” Boetger said.
Since then, Care Moses Lake has grown into a proper non-profit organization that delivers sack lunches to the city’s sleep center, Moses Lake Food Bank and service Moses Lake for the homeless. Last winter, Care Moses Lake began offering hot soup once a week at the Sleep Center, a breakfast for kids during spring break at the Boys & Girls Club, as well as kids in New Hope.
“What (as in) care sacks turned into Care Moses Lake at the very beginning,” she said. “Everything is care – care sacks, care bowls, care snacks.”
It takes a lot of supplies to keep things going, Boetger said, but community generosity makes it possible for Care Moses Lake to help out with more than just sack lunches. The organization works with grocery outlets to raise money and arrange food donations, and Care Moses Lake has an Amazon wish list with everything from granola bars to winter hats, socks, underwear, and paper sacks.
In fact, Boetger hopes to keep it on display this fall with a regional nonprofit, similar to the Moses Lake Chamber of Commerce trade fair, which she’s informally calling Care Fair.
“What I really want to do is to get all these nonprofits and all these service organizations in one place,” Boetger said. “Because I think people want to give back, but sometimes they just aren’t sure how.”
Because it’s great if the guys to help make the sack lunch every Tuesday at around 4:15 p.m. at the Elks Club at 814 N. Stratford Road, Boetger said she knows many people don’t have the time. But almost everyone can find a way to give back to the community in some way or another.
“So, if you can donate financially, that’s even better, because a lot of nonprofits can raise those funds,” she said. “Everyone can give back somehow.”
Linda Maw, who spent Tuesday stuffing bagged sandwiches in paper sacks, said she enjoys knowing that even a little bit of her effort helps the hungry in the community.
“I’ve always done something voluntarily,” Maw said. “It’s all just helping other people.”
For more information, visit the Care Moses Lake website at Caremoseslake.com.
Charles H. Featherstone can be reached at [email protected]
