Harvest Gifts

By Rev Meg Gaston

Every Tuesday our Loaves & Fishes ministry operates out of The Haven on 4 ½ street. From 10-11:30am our community can receive food. Around the holidays, we try to provide our community with something a little more special than what they can get throughout the rest of the year. Lately, however, we have not had the numbers of people coming in for food as in years past. While we hope this means that our community is able to access more food than normal, it has also allowed our Loaves & Fishes team to support our community in other ways.

Between the donations from the church and the food we get from the Second Harvest Food Bank, our Loaves & Fishes ministry is able to help more than just the people who come to us on Tuesday mornings. In addition to giving food out then, we fill Blessing Boxes around town. The main ones we go to are at Open Arms, Southfork Elementary School, and a few in Ardmore and Lewisville. These boxes are open for anybody, so we fill them with peanut butter, fruit, hams (these go quickly), dry beans, cans of chickpeas, and breakfast foods. This way we are able to help those who may not have access to downtown to get the food we hand out at The Haven.

Another group we are able to help feed are people in half-way houses. These are individuals who often have just gotten out of a recovery program of some sort. They live in these half-way houses, sometimes for a short period of time so they can get on their feet. Others have lived there for longer periods of time, up to a year and a half or more. We have taken cases of food to the two women's Oxford Houses and the three men’s Oxford Houses.

On June 13, Rev. Kinken shared with us a way that we can help those in our community by putting together a care package to hand to people in need. Some of the volunteers at Loaves & FIshes do something similar to this, but put a bit more food in their bags.

They make bags of food that include: ham, peanut butter, fruit, little containers of beanie-weenies, ravioli, and breakfast foods that they keep in their car to hand to people who may be holding signs at intersections. If this is something you would like to do as well, please contact Rev. Meg Gaston to find out more.

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