Over the last 2 months we Gracelings have been busy in our community, and as we end Advent and celebrate our Christ’s birth and the coming of the Kingdom of God, it’s a good time to take stock.
We cosponsored 2 food-truck giveaways, the first with Faith Christian Community Church at the end of October, the second just before Thanksgiving at Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church. A total of 490 people were served, who picked up food for 1600 members of their households. The second truck was served by 22 of us from Grace, almost 15% of our active worshipping membership. This was the second- largest volunteer event we had this year, after our involvement in the Blue Water Half Marathon.
We also hosted the Thanksgiving dinner at Pathway homeless shelter. 16 Shelter residents who had nowhere else to go had a complete turkey dinner served by 7 of us from Grace. We provided an extra table and chairs so that everyone could eat at once.
Grace parishioners donated warm clothes and toiletries for an Episcopal mission to Native Americans in South Dakota. We sent a dozen boxes to them.
We also completed our annual “Angel” project with families of kids at Woodrow Wilson School as well as clients of the Council on Aging. All the kids were adopted by our members in record time! We provided a toy and clothing for each of 44 children. Sixteen Wilson families received food parcels, including a ham; 19 seniors also received food and gifts.
We bought sheets and blankets for Pathway, donated knit caps made by seniors, and one of our congregants arranged for a local floor-covering firm to donate new carpet to them. In time for Christmas we’ll be providing pajamas to the 6 children now living in the homeless shelter.
After a fire destroyed the River District supermarket in the south end of town, a lot of people who had walked there to shop were left needing to use public transport to go elsewhere. In order to help some of these people, we purchased a few hundred bus tickets and sent them to the pastors at some of their local churches for distribution. These were Pastor Anthony at Metropolitan Missionary Baptist, Rev. Miller at Restoration Christian Community Church, Pastor Kevin at Christ Centered Community Church, and Elder Thornton at Shiloh Baptist.
We have developed a good working partnership with Blue Water Safe Horizons, parent organization to Pathway. Rather than simply contribute to their general budget, and beyond the other things we do with Pathway, we’ve told them that they can call to refer particular clients to us when we might be nimble enough to offer help in a hurry. So we received a call from a staffer at Carolyn’s Place, the domestic violence shelter, telling us they had a client ready to go into an apartment that their Supportive Housing agency had arranged, but the client had put all her belongings in a storage unit when she fled to the shelter – and couldn’t afford the payment to retrieve them. The contents were to be auctioned in less than a week! BWSH asked if we could help with half the cost, as time pressed. This is exactly the kind of client-specific donation we want! While Carolyn’s Place also initially wanted help moving the furniture from storage into the apartment, and this sort of direct work with clients is what we like, I secretly rejoiced that they found enough people from BWSH staff to handle her two couches, etc., without needing us. I’d rather help move feather-dusters or pillows.