4 minute read
A Call to Action
BY TINA V. BRYSON
Rachel Wheeler had to do something. She discovered a child at the church had been eating dog food because that’s all they had at his house. His parents were on drugs and he was now being raised by his grandparents. So Wheeler and her husband prayed about what to do.
“To think that a child in my community would have to eat dog food if he was hungry just broke my heart. Then the opportunity to open a food pantry just came from out of nowhere and we just jumped at it,” said Wheeler, the president of God’s Hands Ministry Lawrence County Food Bank.
They started out in a small Sunday School classroom in the basement of a church, but they grew so quickly that soon they took over the entire basement. They eventually outgrew the space and now have three buildings where they store and distribute nutritious food to approximately 800 to 1,000 people every month. “The need in the county is tremendous,” Wheeler noted. “We have so many grandparents on fixed incomes raising grandchildren. Plus, we live so far out in the county. In our community, we have just a little country store. Most families do not have the money or the means to buy at the store. That means that they have to make choices between medicine, utilities, or food.”
Wheeler knew Aaron Thoms, the manager of Operation Sharing in Paintsville, Kentucky, from when they both previously worked at Lowe’s. The church they attended was also a community partner.
“I kept my monthly appointment to pick up items, but as soon as we would pick it up, it would be gone real fast. There was such a great need,” she explained. “They asked if I could do a tractor trailer load and that went just as quickly. Without our volunteers, the work would not happen. They are the hands and feet of this ministry.”
During the winter storms earlier in the year, Wheeler and her team faced the hardest challenge. It was in the middle of the ice storm and they were coordinating the delivery of nonperishable food items and water, plus had been doing door-to-door checks for nearly five straight days to make sure people had what they needed to survive.
“The National Guard was here and we were putting food from the pantry in the back of their Humvees to deliver,” Wheeler recalled. “They called for rain and potential flooding. The next day we put items up on stacked pallets to make sure we could save everything. That night it just rained so hard, and it just kept raining and raining.”
The Wheelers tried to make it to the pantry, but the water was too high. They had no choice but to wait two days for the water to recede.
“It was just devastation,” she recalled. “I’ve worked Red Cross Disaster Relief, but it hits you different when it’s your stuff. You feel the emotion: the hurt, the loss, the devastation. We worked 12 years to lose everything. I thought we’d be able to salvage something. I opened the door and immediately saw the refrigerators flipped over. I just stood there and cried. In the back of our building was more than 5 feet of water. We were able to save the building, three plastic tables, and a bathtub,” she recalled with a wry laugh.
“Aaron made sure that we had items to give out,” Wheeler said. “We were still in the middle of the clean up from the ice storm. It was just nonstop.”
They lost 78 tons of product that had to be taken to the dump. People just showed up and started helping. Thoms had already reached out to make sure they were all okay, and to schedule a load of items that the community would need.
She added, “Unless you’ve been in a line and needed to ask for assistance, it’s very humbling. I tell them, ‘Don’t be afraid to get in this line and ask for help. It’s not something to be ashamed of.’ We might be standing outside in 100 degree heat and it seems like the line never ends. We pray over what we have, but we always have enough. God always provides. We just want to be there to fulfill that need.”
(above) Staff felt the hurt, loss, and devastation following historic floods that left more than 5 feet of water in their building. They lost 78 tons of product that had to be taken to the dump as well as refrigerators and freezers.
— Rachel Wheeler
(above) Operation Sharing provided essential items in order for the food bank to continue to serve the community.
