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May, 2026

Spring is definitely in the air!  I have been enjoying trees that have been blooming in my town.  It is as if the whole neighborhood is coming back to life after our harsh winter.  It is good to look for signs of hope especially with all that is going on in our world. But last month, we had a sign of hope come unexpectedly to our church. 

I was coming in for church as I usually did in the morning on Sunday after I had just attended our 9:00am Zoom service.  When I got into the sanctuary, I saw a young girl and her father standing up at the front of the church talking to Terri King, our Worship Leader. They seemed to be having an in depth conversation. I went to the front of the church to greet them and then Terri introduced me. They weren’t here to attend church, but had another mission in mind. 

Lola and her Dad, Matt live across the street from our church.  They have seen first hand how many people come weekly to get food from our outside food dispensary.  They wanted to help contribute to the work that we are doing.  Lola is in eighth grade and was interested in doing a community service project for her honor’s program.  I decided to give them a quick tour of our inside food pantry and our back room where we stock other commodities like diapers. Lola and her Dad weren’t even aware that we had an inside food pantry.  I explained that we are open during the week on Tues. and Thurs. from 10am-12pm for people to come into the church office area and get food.  These are also the church office hours when our staff or volunteers are here to help serve the community. 

Lola and her Dad shared their desire to do a food drive to benefit our Food Pantry.  I told them that that was very generous of them to think of helping out in that way.  Terri had spoken to this family about the details, after corresponding with them via email on our website. They were going to do their food drive on April 28th. 

Flash forward to Tues. April 28th.  Lola and her Dad Matt are now at our church.  Lola had created flyers to put on people’s doors asking them to consider donating food to our food pantry.  On April 28th, Lola and her Dad went around to houses on our street with their car and picked up bags that were waiting for them.  They had even posted this on their Facebook account and had others wanting to give.  In the end they collected many bags of food. 

Lola and her Dad were really two bright lights of hope for me this past week.  And the scripture says, a little child shall lead them.  Thanks, Lola and Matt, for your inspiration.

In Christ,

Pastor Dwayne

P.S. If you have a creative idea of how to help our food pantry, please let us know!