One with each other: Hope's Kitchen feeds the hungry
By Patt Pillsbury
In December, driven by a desire to help hungry people in the Bullhead City area, a group from Hope United Methodist Church’s new Missions Outreach Committee formed “Hope’s Kitchen.” The soup kitchen is meant to serve the community’s hungry people-whoever they are. Working with the health department, planning the first dinner, and raising funds in preparation took several weeks.
As facilitator of this new kitchen, Pat Pillsbury knew opening the first community-wide soup kitchen in the area would have its challenges. They were certainly aware that some people in the community did not have enough food. There was plenty of anecdotal evidence, even among their own acquaintances. There have been a lot of layoffs in the community, and work is scarce. But actual statistics were hard to come by. So it was hard to know how much food they would need, or if people would even come. They decided to open for one meal a month and felt that if this service was needed, God would lead the people to the door.
The group elected to have a dinner on the last Saturday night of the month, when people’s food supplies were most likely to have been used up. The first dinner was held from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. The menu was simple, filling and nutritious, and included beef stew, chili, bagels and breads, crackers, fruit salad, potato salad, and beverages. An invitation to dine was extended to everyone, through flyers, radio and newspapers. Free tickets were distributed in an effort to get a tally in advance of the dinner. One hundred tickets were picked up by February 26, and some people said they would be bringing others. They had 49 guests, enjoyed their company, and invited them back. Leftovers were donated to a men’s ministry in Bullhead City. After evaluating the experience they realized they’ll need to refine the program and see how it can be improved but believe it will grow.
The church is blessed to have Chef Roy Connor and his wife Valerie running the kitchen, they are tremendous assets. Together they bring years of experience in the food industry, and also have been involved in the operation of church soup kitchens in Oregon, so they have a lot of information Hope can draw upon to run a successful program. Valerie’s resourcefulness helped everyone work through the biggest challenge right away. Since Hope’s kitchen was built many years ago, and is not a commercial kitchen in the eyes of the Health Department, Valerie recommended starting with commercial preparations such as number 10 cans of beef stew, and enhanced it with canned potatoes and other ingredients. This plan worked especially well because the kitchen staff could start with a relatively small quantity of food and expand based on the demand. This seemed to work perfectly by keeping our leftovers to a minimum.
In an effort to make guests of the church’s kitchen feel welcome, the dining room was managed with the same care and efficiency as a good restaurant, under the stewardship of Hope’s Trustee Charlie Greer. Charlie made sure someone greeted each person at the door, someone else escorted each guest or group of guests—if they came as a family—to the cafeteria-style serving line. Smiling ladies ladled generous portions of food for guests and invited them back for seconds. Tables were set with placemats, napkins, and plastic dinnerware. Servers brought beverages to each diner. Others cleared and reset the tables when the guests were finished dining. Still other church members made a point of stopping by tables, chatting with diners, and having a bite to eat with them if they were alone. It was Charlie’s purpose that all who dined be treated with dignity, be made to feel welcome, and be invited back. All together, 26 church members served at the first kitchen.
Hope’s Kitchen is not the first time the church has reached out to the community to provide real assistance to the needy. Over many years the church has been supportive of a wide variety of local programs. Currently, Hope numbers among its outreach support programs to feed school children over the weekends, to provide food to the local food banks and baby layettes to young mothers in pregnancy counseling. But Hope’s Kitchen does represent the culmination of an effort to reach out more into the community to draw area residents who need help into the arms of the church family. This effort, fostered in the recent past by Rev. Marc MacDonald, Hope’s previous minister, has now reached fruition in Hope’s Kitchen through the efforts of Rev. Jimelvia Martin.
Rev. MacDonald prepared the ground and planted the seeds for change, growth and renewal. Rev. Martin is doing the cultivating. Harvesting will be left to the Lord.