Serving others by serving food on the holidays

As with many families, Julie Kendrick and her husband, Dick Fiala, round up their children and load everyone into the car on holidays.

But they're not heading to grandmother's house; they're delivering hot holiday meals to people who can't shop or cook for themselves.

It's a win-win-win situation, Kendrick said. The shut-ins get a warm meal, the family gets bonding time and the youngsters get a firsthand lesson that "not everybody is in the same place we are."

On Thanksgiving morning, the south Minneapolis family even had an extra pair of helping hands. Daughters Emma, 15, and Mary Katherine, 12, were joined by Angie Castellano, an Italian exchange student staying with them.

Kendrick's message about the need to share isn't lost on the youngsters. Asked why she likes delivering the holiday meals, Emma said: "We have Thanksgiving every day. We always have plenty of food."

Kendrick and Fiala started delivering meals to shut-ins in 1993.

"When the kids came along, we thought that they should get involved, too," Kendrick said of the meals, which they deliver for VEAP (Volunteers Enlisted to Assist People). "This isn't all the kids do. They also work in the VEAP food shelf."

"Mary Katherine, especially, likes chatting with the people," her mother said.

It's an easy task, the youngster insisted. "The people are always very happy to see you."

Kendrick hopes that what the kids learn about the need to give back to the community lasts a lifetime, however. Kendrick is such a big believer in volunteering that when exchange student Angela arrived, she asked Kendrick why she spends so much time working for no pay.

She was taken aback by the question and didn't know exactly how to respond. The answer came to her a couple of days later when she was volunteering at Southwest High School. A freelance writer, Kendrick was serving as a writing tutor for a Somali student named Abdi, who had immigrated to the United States after his father was killed in his homeland's civil war.

As she worked with him, "I thought about how to answer Angie's question," she wrote in her blog on the Saturday before Thanksgiving. "Why do I volunteer? Because I only have so many hours on this Earth, and I get to choose how to spend them.