From Coffee Grounds to Feeding the Hungry

Debbie is a regular at the Montgomery Tuesday Coffee.  She helps cook and serve, and then heads to work in a food bank that is about 30 minutes away.  She has worked in that food bank for six years, helping order, load and manage what feeds about 70 families each week.

Debbie is a three time cancer survivor who believes that she was spared life to live every minute.  And because she is blessed, she believes she must give back.  Her home was once a community church.  At one end is a long room, and she had the vision of turning it into a food bank to serve folks in her own community who often cannot make it as far away as the closest food bank. 

Debbie is a quiet, humble person who will not ask for anything.  It was her friend who told me about her roof that leaked, and in conversation I learned that she had already completed most of the paperwork and preparation to bring the food bank to her community.   November brought the last two groups of the year, and on Thanksgiving weekend a group completed the new flooring and ceiling for the food bank, built shelves, and put a new roof on her house.  The season of Thanksgiving was an appropriate day to dedicate this vision and warm, dry home to God.  Debbie was beside herself.  She said she could not sleep the night before just thinking about all that had been done.  She had driven up on the main road that overlooked her house twice just so she could look over and see her roof!   

As volunteers from Greenwich Presbyterian Church in Nokesville, Virginia, gathered around Debbie to pray, she shared her vision of feeding the community and thanked them all for the hand they played in making it happen.  And as clouds gathered for what would be a downpour, she was grateful that she would not have to put out buckets to catch the water.  It was clear that the volunteers who gave their loaves and fishes at Thanksgiving would be feeding a multitude.  And they took home baskets full of blessings themselves.

Volunteer in West Virginia

This report was submitted by Joan Stewart, executive director of West Virginia Ministry of Advocacy & Workcamps (WVMAW), as part of the December 2008 WVMAW quarterly report.  Read reports from the WVMAW ministry.