By Marisa Carpenter
Shortly after the Stay Home Stay Healthy order was announced, Pastor Keith came to me with an idea of putting together grocery bags that would be available for pickup for families in need of food. We put together about 20 grocery bags using food from our food pantry. The first day that we started we had 1 person come and get food.
The following week we had about 20, then 40, then 60, until we got to the point where we were putting together 80 bags of food every week.
We partnered with the administrative staff at a local middle school to identify families that were in need of food, but without transportation, and dropped the groceries off at their doorstep.
With the ministry growing so rapidly, we had to put out a call to the congregation to donate the items we needed to fill the bags. They came through for us in a big way. We were getting so many donations we couldn’t fit them all in the food pantry! While filling the bags on Friday, it was a common occurrence for us to realize that we were short a dozen loaves of bread or jars of peanut butter; and just as we were about to run to the store to buy more, a car would pull up to donate the exact amount of food we needed. Moments like this made it impossible to deny the work that God was doing.
We’ve developed partnerships with local organizations that donated fresh food and produce. Other churches that were doing similar things would bring us their leftover produce to give out. The city was coming together and creating connections that hadn’t existed before to serve our brothers and sisters. Though the number of families coming for food continued to grow, we always had enough food to serve them.
One thing that had been weighing on our hearts, was how to get food to people without transportation; those who didn’t have the access or ability to drive to our church and pick up groceries. About two weeks ago we got a call from a community organizer working with the Pacific Coast Fruit Company, they had heard about the work we were doing and wanted to partner with us to distribute 25lb boxes filled with fresh dairy and produce from the USDA Farmers to Families program. We agreed to take about 40 boxes, thinking that was how many we could manage to pass out; but they came back and asked us if we could find a way to distribute 750 boxes. In the matter of a few short days we expanded our operations from one distribution location to five. In addition to passing out groceries at the church, we also distribute the fresh produce and dairy boxes at four apartment complexes in our community.
As our ministry continued to grow, we realized that we had to give it a name. We feel like our story has a clear parallel to one from the Bible; that of feeding the masses with just a few fishes and loaves. Every week we have more and more people reaching out in need of food; and not once have we ever run out or had to turn someone away.
[Click Here] to learn more about Kent Covenant’s Community Assistance Ministry and make a donation.
