Groceries for Families: Week 2 - Day 5
April 3, 2020
Today was a very smooth day, with a great feeling all around this operation. The wind brought some cold temperatures and played havoc with our papers, but people were in good moods and seemed happy to be with us. Check-in is an easy process that people are learning and moves quickly.
Groceries were delivered by Crossroads Bible, Evangelical Chinese Church of Seattle and Covenant Presbyterian. There is a lot of cold items in these orders, so it took us some time to get it all packed into the refrigerator.
People received bulk food items (rice, flour, salt, sugar, pinto beans, butter) and cooking oil. We made the decision to buy small Mason jars to hold the oil. Each family gets one jar. If they want more later, they can bring the jar back to fill.
A few stories for you:
We’ve been trying to give families 1 or 2 rolls of TP with each order. This morning I was standing at my desk thinking about tomorrow’s families, because we used the remaining TP for today’s orders. No more TP is expected. Do I go buy more? Do we just do without? I will admit I didn’t pray about it in the moment. As I stood there, I looked out my interior office door window and discovered a mountain of TP had appeared outside my door. (see picture) I asked the Site Coaches, who told me Crossroads Bible Church had included it with their grocery order. Love that! Thank you.
On Wednesday, we had 20 extra orders at the end of the day, due to some miscommunication with new families. Early this morning I connected with the Pastor of a small local church, New Hope Revival, whose members are immigrants from Rwanda and the Congo. Most of them work in the types of hourly positions most affected by this crisis. I had heard earlier in the week many of them were in distress. The Pastor arrived with a minivan at 9:30am, where we loaded up the groceries, some fresh meat, diapers, bread and more. He took it directly to his members and sent some wonderful texts of thanks over the course of the day. The last said “Thank you very much brother. My people needed food and were hungry.”
The two things that cause me distress in this whole program are 1) having families on the waiting list, whom I know are hungry and stressed, and 2) having food here at Jubilee which needs to get out to families. Nothing gets hoarded here. It all goes out. Thank you my dear friends for providing this nourishment and love to this community.
We are working on bringing those on the waiting list into the program. Thank you to those of you able to increase your weekly commitments. If anyone is able to bring more grocery orders, please let me know ASAP.
One more day in the week tomorrow morning. It’s been a good week.
Bless you all,
Ken Carpenter
Service Coordinator, Jubilee REACH
