**UPDATE regarding DATE CHANGE to August 5th**
Due to latest information from our contact, the date has been changed to August 5, 2017.
Fellow F3 Pax,
We have an opportunity to help serve others in the Midlands — this ministry focuses on the homeless and under-resourced people in our community. In partnership with the Nehemiah Project/Christ Central Ministries, the Matthew 25 Ministry seeks to feed the hungry in our local community by offering hot meals to those in need. For me, this was just eye-opening to our community and the real struggles people are going through each day, this one being just getting a hot meal on a Saturday. A first happened for me last month — four children came with their parents and/or grandparents. Talk about pulling at your heart strings. There are also times that folks will come through multiple times, and they will also come and get food for others that can’t walk to get there. It just further emphasizes how blessed we are.
Matthew 25:35 says, “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in.”
The ministry currently serves the first and last Saturdays of the month and our plan is to join this group on Saturday, July 29th (now August 5th). With this ministry there are a few ways to serve: help cook food, deliver food, and assisting others to serve the food. Details are provided below for each opportunity and they can use any help that can be offered. General thought based on my experience is 3-4 PAX to help cook, 1-2 PAX to help deliver, and 4-5 PAX to help serve. There are other churches that help as well but you really never know how much help will be there so more the better I’d say. If no food to serve, we will help persons with disabilities to their seat – make them really feel served. I normally do whatever Ms. Sue asks me to do…she helps cook the food and gets us all setup to serve the food and then she returns supplies to the church. There are a few volunteers who are regulars and are there every month. The last time I was there the gentlemen who runs the Christ Central ministries told me to come back for the time they do it on first Saturday of the month. I need to make a point to do that sometime.
Cooking Food: They use the kitchen at Zion Lutheran Church on Corley Mill Road – 226 Corey Mill Road, Lexington, SC. The kitchen is located closest to River Bluff High School and uses same driveway as Boy Scout Troop building. Start little after 7am and cook until about 10-10:30am then leave to deliver food to downtown Columbia. I’d like to offer that someone or two PAX volunteer to deliver the food downtown.
Serving Food: Serve at the Christ Central facility at the corner of Main St & Calhoun St. Coming from Lexington, once you turn right from Elmwood onto Main, it’s the first building/parking lot on your left, you’ll have to turn left onto Calhoun and enter the parking lot from there. You should see signs on the street for “Free Lunch Today”. For serving the food, we get there and get the food and supplies all lined out on a long table starting with the main dish and ending with the desert and then drinks (water and lemonade) on another table. The folks grab a plate and go through the line and you put the food on their plate (if they want it that is, some folks don’t want salad, chips, or whatever) — but it’s just like a cafeteria-style. After all the food is gone or all the folks have come and gone, we’ll clean up, pack everything up, and take it all back to Zion Lutheran Church. We’re normally finished serving food around 12pm – can be earlier…never really any longer than that though. We’ll need one or two PAX to volunteer to take some supplies back to Zion Lutheran Church.
If you have any questions feel free to let me know…If you can HC, please use the link below to sign up:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JwA5Lu2aJOwNFEo2imkNXXnwv10zbDb4q8XEtRqk4_0/edit#gid=0