Love is an amazing thing!!!!

The outpouring of love from the people working for my company is just amazing...

I haven't written about it, but one of the supervisors on day shift, who is also the sister of my night shift manager, suffered a rupture of an aneurysm in her brain stem on Monday and was taken to the hospital and then flown to Springfield for better care. It is now Friday and Donna is still in the ICU in the hospital, but she is making very good progress toward recovery.

But back to the love... Say what you will about the Hispanic culture and population, but I have a renewed respected for them tonight. When we first learned of Donna's condition, they immediately got a box and wrote a sign about what happened and asked for a donation of money during the breaks at work. Monday night they collected $198. Before the night was over, they were already making plans to have a dinner on Friday night to raise money by charging $5 a plate and ladies of the plant making food. Somewhere along the line, they even got the plant manager and owner to donate 60 pounds of chicken to cook.

So Friday rolls around, and I have now learned that we have some amazing women and amazing cooks in our plant! We had way too much food, in fact some of it is now in my fridge! But we managed to make about 60 plates before each group took a break, more as were needed, a few that just had to make their own plate and we fed all that wanted to buy a plate. There were a few that gave us a $20 and only wanted $10 for change. The ladies even made plans to sell hot chocolate and desserts at second break. But in total tonight, we took in $758.60 to send to Donna's family! I also picked up 6 get well cards from the stores and had as many employees as wanted to sign a card for Donna. I can't wait for her to be coherent enough to look at them and be reminded of how loved and missed she is :)

I talked to Becky later in the evening, and when I told her what the final tally of the dinner was, she was beside herself. She was telling me to make sure we told everyone there and all those ladies how much they appreciate it, and how much they are loved and how much the family appreciates them.

It really makes me feel special to be a part of a huge family like that!