Ben--part 2

I had to ask Ben to leave. You can’t see it from there, but he has quite an inflated ego and we could not get along with each other. I'm guessing that whoever he was with last, got sick of him, and that's why they put him in my mailbox. The only reason I agreed to work with him is because I have a ton of respect for Al. I had to do a lot of editing and rewriting for Ben, but he did better than usual, because most of the time, I find him to be quite flat.

So let’s talk about the multiplication of dollars that go to the food pantry.

Basically, the directors make a purchase from the Northern Illinois Food Bank. Their investment makes a chain reaction that I will loosely describe for you. The food program will, of course, get a good return for each dollar. But they don’t only get the items they purchased. The Northern Illinois Food Bank also makes donations, based on their surplus and how many people each food program serves.

Local restaurants like KFC, Olive Garden and Panera do their share as well. For example, have you visited Panera? Do you remember all those fresh-baked breads and pastries? They can’t keep them overnight, so on Wednesday night, the local Panera empties its shelves and puts all of that good stuff in large plastic bags for our food program. At the end of every business day, they must donate it or toss it out.

A nearby Red Lobster test marketed plateware. They ran their program and when they finished collecting their data, they contacted the food pantry to pick up vanloads of free dishes. The pantry volunteers counted and sorted the dishes, and there were 55 sets of dinner plates (6-each), soup bowls, dessert bowls, saucers, cups, and other things like platters, salt & pepper holders, sugar holders, and more. Mrs. Craver tried to come up with a dollar value for the plateware. She figured that the whole shipment would have retailed at $4,500, at least! ($80 to $100 X 55)

Volunteers come to the church throughout the week to stock shelves, fold clothes (The clothing closet resembles a thrift store with racks and all!) and do a lot of behind the scenes stuff to make it all come together. It has been so cold outside, that For now… and son brought a crockpot of delicious homemade soup for our guests.

My part at the pantry is to make sure that we all get the connection this ministry has with God, our provider. You can’t put a price on what God does when we pray about people’s hurts and especially the presentation of the gospel. At the Christmas meeting, 25 people said they placed saving trust in Jesus Christ!