Groceries for Families Week 23 - Day 5
Our Friends,
As you’ve heard before, Fridays are the peak day for the week in terms of families coming. It is always busy. This makes is a favorite day for the crew, while also knowing we have to work more. Lots of groceries came in this morning, as well as pantry drop offs. Thank you! Families were a steady stream all afternoon, which is wonderful to see.
Jubilee Friends Delivery
Crossroads Bible Church Delivery
Groceries today were provided by Evangelical Chinese, Covenant Presbyterian, Crossroads Bible and Bellevue Presbyterian churches, as well as the Jubilee Friends group. A total of 142 orders came in today and all went out to families today. Thank you to everyone who gave today!
Extra deliveries came in today from Neighbors Feeding Neighbors (thank you, Narima!), Crossroads QFC (thank you, Gill), Holy Cross Lutheran Gardeners, the King County Master Gardeners and someone who had a glorious plum tree with very tasty fruit. Thank you everyone!
Senior Lunch Delivery
Lunches for seniors were provided today by Crossroads Bible Church and delivered by volunteers to 25 seniors in the community. Thank you volunteers and CBC for the lunches over the past 6 weeks!+
Food Truck
More families were registered for next week today. This will make the operation much more efficient starting next week.
The food truck is here tonight. Thank you BelPres for sponsoring dinner for the families.
The crew had a late lunch today on the patio to celebrate finishing V1. It was a lot of fun. Thank you to Barb and her crew for making the tasty meal!
Update on next week:
We learned late Wednesday the expected food boxes from the US Government will be delayed at least a week. This impacts the ‘Groceries for Families’ program, as well as countless others around the country who were counting on this food. The perishable food being counted on won’t be here, so we were instructed to come up with a gap filler. Yesterday, we worked through the options at hand and have decided to purchase the food to provide a bag of dairy, eggs, fruit, vegetables and protein for each family. We shopped the stores and have come up with a good plan to get it done at a decent price.
Loading at Farmer Frog
Additionally, today we made a trip to Farmer Frog in Woodinville to pick up whatever food they had available which could be used next week. We now have 140 food boxes in refrigeration (thank you BelPres for the cooler space!), 4 large bins of watermelon, corn meal flour, coffee from Seattle’s Best and a few other items. This is a start.
Watermelon from Farmer Frog
By Monday, we will be pulling together the supplies and will continue each morning of Tue, Wed and Thu to pack bags of perishables. We are confident each family will leave with a good amount of food, with a balanced variety. Hopefully, this is a one week delay, but we are concerned it will stretch to two weeks. We will keep you posted.
Currently there are 161 families registered for next Tuesday, 98 for next Wednesday and 107 registered for next Thursday. The Wednesday numbers are low because tomorrow will add to them. We should end the week with about 400 preregistered. This means there are still about 125 families which need to register next week. Once the USDA boxes start coming, we plan to add families from the Bellevue School District very quickly, as we know there is more need out there.
Today’s PM Crew
Thank you for sticking with this program the past 5 ½ months. There is one more day remaining in the current program. As we’ve said many times, this feels exactly where we all should be. Thank you for all you’re doing.
Have a great evening,
Ken Carpenter
Service Coordinator, Jubilee REACH
