Growing into the Ministry: Healing Hunger Food Pantry

Yours truly!

Our church's mission trip to Honduras, originally scheduled for next month, was postponed until next year due to COVID. I asked Father Tom Phillips if, instead of winding down, we could instead wind up the team's efforts and start serving in our local Hispanic community. This serves multiple purposes. It provides practical help to people who need it. It gives our team cross-cultural training opportunities in preparation for going to Honduras. It fosters our congregation's relationships within the diocese and the community. And it gives me a way to gather internship hours. (I'd be doing it anyway, though.)

Father Tom put me in touch with Padre Jose Rodriguez, the priest at Jesus de Nazaret, one of the three Hispanic congregations in the Episcopal Diocese of Central Florida. I was already Facebook friends with him, so this worked out well! Jose has kindly agreed to allow us to collaborate with his parish in serving the community, as well as to provide significant cross-cultural training for our team and other parish members who want to participate.

Jose's congregation, along with Christ the King which meets at the same location, run the Healing Hunger food pantry on the second Saturday morning of each month in the Azalea Park area of Orlando.

Church of the Incarnation (where I attend) is now tentatively scheduled to run a major food drive in July and August, and then serve at the pantry's monthly event on August 8. In preparation for leading our team there, I visited the pantry this morning to get an on-the-job orientation from Jose. I helped pack some of the food outside, and then went inside to pack more. Afterwards, Jose took the time to talk with me about what Nazaret is doing within the Azalea Park community.

About 229 families (representing 879) people received about a week's worth of food this morning. This includes meat, eggs, fresh produce (a surprise delivery from Second Harvest), breads, and non-perishable foods.

I loved being down there! I look forward to returning again in July, and then taking our team down there in August. We'll be gearing up about two weeks in advance of that, as we gather food from our members and the local community. I'll keep you posted!

Until then, here are just a few of the photos from this morning's pantry event. It is drive through due to COVID. There is more that they would regularly do.