First Church Family,
The sunny weather has been wonderful! After a cold, dark, wet winter, spring has actually sprung. But what about the saying: “April showers bring May flowers?”
One of the things our congregation is known for in our region is our commitment to food ministry for the poor.
Though the COVID pandemic has been a challenge for us, and prevented us from reaching out to the community through our Thanksgiving Day provision of “ready to cook” meals for 100+ local families, and our Pancake Day for local charities (which in 2020 served 1,300 persons, including many hundreds of local students), our church has continued to provide incredible resources through our gifts of thousands of packages of rice, pasta, dried beans, and now 18 oz. boxes of oats, to our ministry partner, Yokefellow. Yokefellow advises its clients to use oats in a number of ways, including to bolster regular recipes with added carbs and nutrition.
Through the pandemic, we have continued to provide our Room at the Table ministry, which feeds impoverished residents. Too, we have supported our Backpack Ministry with bags of food that elementary/middle school children take home on weekends, so that their families will have a start on weekend meals.
We also stock our church’s pantry for emergency provisions when residents are unable to get food through other means. During the COVID Pandemic, our volunteers and staff have cooked and delivered meals within our own congregation to those who need temporary assistance.
And now that students are completely back at our local high schools, our West Caldwell Food Pantry ministry is ready to re-stock the pantry there.
Our commitment to providing food for those in need hasn’t gone unnoticed. In January I applied for a grant through the Royce and Jane Reynolds Foundation to help us support (and hopefully increase) our commitment to serve Christ through food distribution in our county, which is one of the most impoverished in Western North Carolina.
Last week, we received notification of a grant of $5,000 toward our 2021 Backpack, West Caldwell, and Room at the Table ministries to be received from the Reynolds Foundation.
God is Good! All the Time! Thank you for the support of those life enhancing food ministries, to which our congregation is committed.
I look forward to seeing more of you in the coming months, now that we are offering more opportunities to be together at our church in-person. May God continue to bless you and our congregation, as we seek to be Jesus’ hands and feet in our community and world.
Blessings and love,
Pastor Dave