Celebrating Joblessness

My furlough has officially arrived. I haven't heard much from work. I had a few people call me to say hi, but other than that, I haven't heard a peep.

And the world is still turning (just as I thought it would).

To celebrate my lack of a job, I decided to go push chunks of raw turkey into cans. Doesn't sound fun? Well, to tell you the truth, it really wasn't that enthralling, but it was for a good cause.

One thing that I appreciate about my religion is that there are plenty of opportunities to serve other people. There is a cannery down in Garden City that is run by volunteers. Each church unit in our area are assigned different days throughout the year to have people go volunteer. It ends up that each person goes (in theory) about once a year for a four hour shift.

We ended up doing turkey chunks. They take frozen turkey breasts, put them into a grinder that moves them up a conveyor belt into a hopper that feeds them into the cans (with the help of people) that goes down the conveyor belt to fill up the cans with hot water and seal the cans.

*breath*

There is another area where they pressure cook the meat, put the labels on the cans, and box them up.

I ended up being put in charge of making sure that the meat was pushed down into the cans. I didn't realize how tired my hand would get when I had to force the chunks into the cans. I went and did this on Tuesday, and my tricep is still pretty sore today. As I was standing by another volunteer, she commented to me that she would be completely fine not eating turkey for a while.

I would have to agree with her.

There were times when the meat was warm and slimy. Wifey would have never made it. During her pregnancy, she has had a hard time cutting up a chicken breast to cook. She doesn't particularly like raw meat normally, but she would have died during her pregnancy.

After I left, I smelt a bit like the frog I dissected in my eight grade class.

I was willing to do this because of what the cannery does. You can buy the goods if you want. A bulk of the food gets given away at little or no cost. People can receive assistance from the church in the form of a bishop's storehouse. It is like a supermarket without any cash registers. You get an order filled from your bishop (hence the name) before you head there, and then they give you what you need and send you on your merry way.

Another place where this food gets sent is to the sites of natural disasters. They get all this food on hand, and then when something goes wrong, the church has a the means to get the food to where it is needed.

So even though my arm is a bit sore and the idea of eating turkey is still repulsive, I was happy to help.