They can head over to the food bank!

It's a 20 minute drive with current Monday-morning traffic levels, and then the parking lot out front is full and it's another couple of minutes driving around to find the nearest street parking, and another few minutes to walk over from said parking; they're in the door by 9:45 am. 

The building is long and low and beige. There appear to be two buildings with St Vincents signs, actually, one across the smaller street and also beige, but Evelyn leads them toward the one that the GPS told her is the right address for the St Vincents Food Pantry.

For once, Evelyn doesn't recognize any of the staff or volunteers inside. It's a cheerful enough space, one plaster wall beside the service counter painted pink, the lower half of the wall behind said counter painted a bright sunny yellow. There are a lot of printed-off signs pinned to various walls with masking tape, some written-on with highlighter, many faded or half peeling off; the nearest one that Evelyn can read appears to be a volunteer roster, which is promising. There's a counter, and a long open space behind it, with industrial-style metal shelves and stacks and stacks of boxes, the kind you can pick up at the grocery store for free. Most are labeled with sticky notes, impossible to read from this distance.

A young red-haired man behind the desk, wearing a zip-up black sweatship with 'Catholic Charities of Northern Nevada' emblazoned on it in purple and a nametag on a lanyard that introduces him as 'Tyler, Volunteer', is consulting a list in a tatty binder and talking to an elderly woman with a cane accompanied by a younger but grizzled-looking man who might be her son. A handful of others are waiting behind the woman in a straggling line; none of them look especially homeless, though Evelyn has to admit she wouldn't really know, would she. To one side, the lobby space also holds a couple of small chipped Formica tables and some uncomfortable-looking stacking plastic chairs. An overweight woman with four young children is sitting down there, on her phone. 

There are some other closed doors leading out of the lobby space, unlabeled, and Evelyn can see more staff or volunteers moving at the back, but it's not obvious who she's supposed to talk to. She settles for trying to catch 'Tyler's' eye and offering a little smile and wave. 

"Hey!" he says cheerfully. "Welcome to the pantry, how can I help you? Are you registered with us?"

"Hi! My name is Evelyn. I actually sent an email on - I think Saturday morning? - but I imagine you're all really busy. This is my foster daughter Iomedae and she was maybe interested in volunteering with you. Is there a process to sign up for that?" 

"Oh! Yeah, there totally is. We have volunteer shifts in the warehouse sorting donations and packing boxes, Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, right after school, we get a lot of local students. I can get you the application form - it's here somewhere -" He starts digging through a stack of paperwork.

Iomedae looks around the room. She isn't sure what she was expecting. It's certainly an astounding quantity and variety of food to be giving to the poor. 

This is - not very confusing, she doesn't think. The only really confusing piece was why the workers wouldn't come to places like this and as she told Alfirin she's no longer confused about that. 

"Thank you," she says brightly to Tyler. 

"Oh, excellent, thank you! I'll try not to take up too much of your time, I can see you're busy, but do you happen to know how long the application process takes? And what sort of approval she needs if she's a minor - she's fifteen." Also she can't read or write yet but Evelyn really isn't sure how to ask about that in front of Iomedae without it being agonizingly awkward. 

"There's a spot on there for a parent to sign if she's under eighteen. It's not a huge process, it's just a couple of pages, some basic contact information, agreeing to the rules of the food bank and its statement of values and stuff."

"Of course!" She smiles brightly at Iomedae again. "I'll help you fill it out." She lowers her voice, now kind of wishing she had thought to ask about this before they came in here. "...Alfirin, love, do you have any interest in filling one out as well? There's no pressure, you don't have to." 

What does that mean??? She's not sure what she's supposed to say here. It was Iomedae's idea, not Evelyn's, so... she guesses Evelyn doesn't want her to? But then why would she ask? If she works at the food bank this will give opportunities to talk to talk to Iomedae without it bothering Evelyn, and an opportunity for English practice....not that she's short of those.

"If me English good enough?"

"Oh, fluency with Spanish is actually really helpful for the volunteers!" says Tyler. "It's okay if you're an English language learner."

Evelyn is not actually at all sure that Alfirin is fluent in Spanish, but Iomedae is at least solid. "They both speak Spanish better than English," she confirms. "Though it's not their first language either. I think the language practice would be good for them." 

Glance at Iomedae. "Why don't you talk about it with Alfirin for a moment and help her decide? You can speak Taldane." She's realizing that she miiiight have kind of put Alfirin on the spot, here, and the chance to have an actually-private back and forth about it might help mitigate that. 

"Do you want to do it? I'm not sure what you should say if you don't."

"It does not seem worse than other work? Do you think she wants me to do it or do you think she wants me to not?"

"...I think she wants you to be as excited about it as I was when it sounded like they might only have the problem that the church was trustworthy and the workers did not know this, and therefore any answer will be a little disappointing. I am sorry I inconveniently set the bar there."

"And if I am not excited does she want me to say yes or no? Maybe you do not know. This seems no worse than other work and we will be able to talk."

"I think it will go over all right if you say that you are not as excited as me but want to do it to learn more English."

"I do not know how to say that in English yet."

"Alfirin says, she no is as excited as me to do it but she want to do it to learn more English."

Evelyn smiles at Alfirin. "That's perfectly all right." She turns her smile back toward 'Tyler'. "I'll fill out applications for both of them. Thank you so much." 

He hands over the applications and a pen with a large plush carrot taped to it so you don't forget it's the pantries'. 

Evelyn smiles and goes to sit down at one of the formica tables - it's slightly sticky on top - and fill out forms. 

A couple of minutes later, a girl in baggy blue scrubs - with bike grease and a slight rip at the bottom of one pant leg - pushes her way through one of the closed doors, ushering out a skinny older man with numerous tattoos on his wiry arms, wearing a baggy, stained white singlet and jeans. 

"Make sure to come back next week, Mr Ferston," she says, looking at him very seriously. "Nine-thirty, it's on your appointment card. Please try not to forget, okay?" 

She looks like she hasn't slept in at least an entire day. She immediately ducks around behind the counter, vanishes briefly, and comes back with coffee in a paper cup, then stands and leans on the counter. 

Evelyn waves at her. "Hi! We met at Walmart that one time, right? I thought you worked at the hospital." 

"I volunteer here as well. There's a community health thingy. Uh. Program." 

She smiles at Iomedae and Alfirin.