“I wanted to say THANKS for the kindness and care, especially for the bread. I am so obliged. Thank you so much for reinstating the love of God. You all are His special blessed souls.”
On April 11, we delivered food for the first time to 48 different homes. To date, we've made 317 deliveries to homes. If the average family is 4, we have served 1,268 people. Here is an update from outreach member Debby Hoppe about how these efforts began. Be encouraged that your generosity and ongoing help is making a difference!
From the moment that schools were being closed, The Falls Church Anglican’s outreach department has been working to address the food insecurity issues that confront our neighbors. There is much work that has gone into our measured response, including joining a task force with community partner Comunidad and the Chinese Christian Church, and meeting with a coalition of 11 pastors and community leaders in the Culmore area to try and coordinate efforts to provide food for the community.
From there, our team of staff and volunteers worked to support the existing food pantries in our area by supplying extra food and manpower as needed to keep them operational; provided food for multiple families in the Falls Church High School community with immediate and specific needs; worked to help create an online platform to request assistance, and set up our own church narthex as a food collection point.
Any day of the week from 3-6 p.m. you can drop off suggested items from the general list of food pantry needs listed HERE. Find the “drive thru” in the parking lot outside the lower narthex.
Through our work with the Culmore community, McLean Bible Church notified us that they had 200 boxes of food to distribute and they needed some help. I showed up on Saturday, March 21, along with 15-20 other volunteers at the Chinese Christian Church of Virginia who had agreed to use their parking lot for a food distribution that had barely been advertised to local communities because it was a last-minute effort.
The distribution was supposed to start at Noon. I arrived at 11 a.m., and there were already 10 people in line, waiting patiently for the food truck to come. The volunteers discussed how we wanted to direct traffic, both for drivers and walkers as the hour approached. At about 11:45 a.m., the truck pulled up and we started unloading boxes of perishables and non-perishables onto tables. The boxes kept coming, and the line kept growing.
We quickly learned that we had a couple of issues that we needed to address quickly. Most people were coming on foot – more women than men – and often with little children and infants in tow or in strollers. First, a volunteer would take each person’s name and hand out a devotional book. Next, we handed each family or individual two large cardboard boxes of food, one with perishables such as eggs and milk inside, and the other with non-perishables like rice and beans.
Miracle of miracles, one of the volunteers from McLean Bible Church had gotten several large multipacks of toilet paper and paper towels. It wasn’t nearly enough, but enough that each person got to pick one roll of toilet paper or roll of paper towels to take in addition to the groceries. So now, these people were trying to carry two large boxes, a roll of toilet paper, and a book, while continuing to hold the hands of small children and push strollers to get the food home.
There was also a bit of a language barrier for many of the volunteers as most of us did not speak Spanish, but that was the primary language of those seeking food that day. What did cross the language barrier was a willingness to serve, a smile shared as we distributed what we could, a nod in response to the frequent words of thanks or “gracias” that these people offered in exchange. We had volunteers offering to help walk people home with their boxes (but never enough, because the line kept growing), and we offered to write their names on the boxes so they could take one at a time and come back for the other box. We watched at least two women drop the boxes of precious eggs because they couldn’t carry it all together. And the line kept growing.
Thanks to the generosity of so many, our inventory is growing by the day!
Eventually, at about 12:45 p.m. (only 45 minutes into distribution), we had to make the decision that each person could only take one box of food, either perishable or non-perishable, because we could see we had more people in line than we had boxes of food left. And the line kept growing. At 1:15, we handed out the last box of food, but the line hadn’t ended. There were still 10-12 people in line, and more coming to join, even as we had to start packing up the tables.
The volunteers leading the event took names and phone numbers and promised to call those left in line when more food was available.
Debby Hoppe serves as our Neighborhood and Global Engagement Administrative Assistant. She grew up in a Christian family, the granddaughter of missionaries, but it still took her until after college to really have the love and knowledge of God touch her on a personal level. Currently, she lives in a multigenerational home with her parents, son, cousin and her kids, and two dogs, so they regularly practice their non-violent conflict resolution skills. If she has free time, she spends as much of it traveling internationally (with her son) as possible.
““I’d seen the food bank on the website as well and considered it. After the midweek devotional that mentioned it, I thought I would check it out and found they had volunteer shifts on Saturdays. I’m really trying to push myself out of my comfort zone, so when I found the study, I made myself reach out … And then I didn’t let myself chicken out. And when I saw there were shifts at the food bank I could do, I took a breath and did it. I was a single mom when the twins were born. I’ve needed a food bank. We were the family that got gifts from the church at Christmas, and we got the donated kids clothes. Been there and high time I gave back.””
