Groceries for Families: Week 40 - Day 1
December 28, 2020
Remember last Monday: wet, cold, snow…today was MUCH better. The sun was out with a blue sky. The temperature was cold but tolerable. Hooray! Even the families commented about how better it was. Like last week, the entire Thursday operation shifted to Monday. Thank you to everyone who made that change one last time. The morning was busy with people dropping off groceries and pantry items, along with delivery trucks of all sorts. Families lined up right on time, with most waiting in their cars because of the cold. The pace was somewhat slow much of the afternoon, likely due to the holiday season, which has impacted attendance, for sure. It was another lovely day here.
Groceries today were provided by Bellevue Presbyterian, Lighthouse, Crossroads Bible, Highland Covenant, Sacred Heart Parish and School, Overlake Park Presbyterian, First United Methodist and Doxa churches, as well as Champions Foundation and the Jubilee Friends group. A total of 192 orders came in and all but 40 went out today, including 6 by delivery. The rest will carry over to tomorrow, which is typically a busy day. Thank you to everyone who donated today.
Because of the shift to Monday, food boxes couldn’t be delivered. So, Randy took the Jubilee box truck to downtown Kent early this morning to pick up 200 food boxes from Medosweet Farms. Thanks, Randy and Katherine.
The AM volunteer crew came from primarily Crossroads Bible Church and a couple ringers to help. This crew worked hard in the cold and had to unload all 200 food boxes by hand, as the pallet jack wasn’t available to help. A large pallet full of Costco items came today from Evangelical Chinese Church. Three boys from the crew had the duty of breaking it down and bringing everything inside. It was fun to watch them manage the 50# bags of cat litter. They all did a super job. Thank you, crew!
Volunteers brought food from Safeway Thrasher’s Corner in Bothell yesterday. Volunteers brought food from QFC Crossroads today. Thank you for these wonderful additions!
The delivery of fresh produce came yesterday afternoon from Cascadia Produce in Auburn. This is the last one from a 2-month grant from King County to buy produce from King County farms for King County residents. It has been a wonderful addition to this program. Along with the funding ends, the growing season is essentially done, with the colder temperatures. Today, the market had Brussel sprouts, red beets, mustard greens, collard greens, mushrooms, green cabbage, leeks, and savoy cabbage. We will miss this next week.
The senior market, with the same King County grant money, was offered this afternoon for the last time. About 35 senior citizens in the community came today. We’ll deliver to a few more tomorrow with lunch.
A quick update on a family:
We’ve been following one family whose husband has been battling a reoccurrence of brain cancer since June. The wife texted early this morning with an update and prayer request. Her husband was in severe pain Saturday night, so she called 911 getting him to Overlake Hospital. They found an abscess, and he had a seizure. They did emergency surgery on Sunday, and he is now in recovery. He will remain there for now, while they seek a reason for the seizure. She knows many of you are praying for them and asked you to please continue.
An update on the USDA food boxes:
This week is the last delivery of food boxes within the current USDA ‘Farmers to Families’ program. (You can follow along here: https://www.ams.usda.gov/selling-food-to-usda/farmers-to-families-food-box.) The signed stimulus plan does have money allocated for food assistance, however it is unclear what will happen in January. Three possibilities exist: 1) No new food box program is offered. The money is used in another way to provide food relief to communities.; 2) The current program is extended. This would likely be temporary and would required 1-3 weeks of ramp up, as supply chains have already been broken.; 3) A new food box program is offered and put out to rebid. Bidding would take at least 1 week, and then the ramp up would be 2-3 weeks.
We expect to decide on the plan for next week and beyond by tomorrow. Milk will be one of the harder items to acquire. If anyone is willing, Fred Meyer has half gallons on sale for $.77 through tomorrow with a digital coupon for five units. We’d love to start storing milk up in the refrigerators, 2% or whole milk. More to come…stay tuned.
We begin this week with 712 families in the ‘Groceries for Families’ program. Of the 49 people on the waiting list a few weeks ago who were invited to enter the program, 28 have been added. There are 41 on the waiting list, including the 21 who have not come to enter the program. Since September 1, there have been 68 families removed from the program. There are currently 87 families on the ‘watch list’ for inconsistent attendance. If you’re interested, here is the breakdown of the number of people in each family:
1= 9
2= 53
3= 107
4= 185
5= 188
6= 105
7= 29
8= 23
9= 5
10= 6
11= 1
13= 1
Thank you for your continued support of this program and these families. Your generosity of time, energy, treasure, and prayer is helping so much. We hope 2021 will bring a return of employment for these families, so they can begin to fully support themselves again. Until then, together, we can all help. Thank you!
Happy New Year!
Ken Carpenter
Director- Community Care, Jubilee REACH
On behalf of the Jubilee family