Feed My Sheep

Sister Charity occasionally puts little messages in the ward newsletter about our local food pantry and opportunities to come sort donations and pack boxes for pick up. I’d thought about dropping in to help, but like a lot of good intentions it never seemed to be the right time. There was always something more important to do like ignoring the laundry or pretending to write.

But one Sunday Sister Charity handed out a little flyer with a list of needs in Relief Society. We could drop donations at her house or show up at the food pantry Wednesday night and help build kits for kids to take home. The kits were kept in the counselors’ offices in local schools and were given out on the down low when kids asked, mostly to help them over the weekend.

  Photo by Aaron Doucett on Unsplash

 As the RS lesson droned on, I looked over the list.

• Single pack instant oatmeal
• Granola bars
• Fruit cups
• Mac & cheese
• Ramen: chicken or beef flavors only
• Microwave popcorn

That can’t be it, I thought. I wonder what else goes in these kits.

So after class, I walked up and asked.

“That’s everything,” said Sister Charity. “They’ve got it down to a science. They know what works, so those are the only things they want.”

“Really? Nothing else?” I asked. “It’s all fairly empty carbs. Not a lot of nutrition for growing kids.”

“What?” asked Sister Fit, taking the list from me. She’s always jogging, biking, or driving her kids to their sporting events. She tsked. “Yeah, that’s terrible. But what can you expect? These kids just go home, eat a bunch of carbs, and sit around.”

“Oh, they don’t eat it,” said Sister Crunchy. She has massive pesticide-free gardens and cans and freeze-dries and ferments and makes her own goat cheese and butter. She once told me in all seriousness that when given in time her sourdough cures cancer and that her wheat bread healed celiac sufferers—all while my loved one was dying of cancer. (Visiting Teaching was extra hard that year.) Sister Crunchy sighed. “It’s a waste, really. They just go home and eat candy.”

At that moment my brain exploded. I knew my ward was blessed lucky privileged in complicated ways. We have no welfare needs, and the annual youth fundraiser provides very comfortable budgets for these programs. But it was ridiculously beyond the pale to truly believe that kids who got food on the sly from a school counselor went home and binged on candy or sat around all evening, unmotivated to do anything else. Their mindset was that people make choices—chocolate bars over organic apples and mindless video games over basketball. The sense of nothing to be done was palpable.

To be honest, it was their comments and attitudes that finally kicked my butt into gear.

Whatever. I’ll talk to food bank. Somebody hasn’t thought this through.

I had a lot to learn.

Photo by Joel Muniz on Unsplash

The next day at Costco I debated buying nut or protein bars over simple oat and honey bars, protein fortified ramen with veggies over cheap plain beef or chicken noodles, fancy oatmeal with protein and dried fruit over boxes of Quaker instant, and fresh fruit over syrupy fruit cups. I picked up and put down peanut butter, canned tuna and chicken, and beef jerky. In the end I decided to get what they asked for instead of what I thought they needed—something my daughter had taught me through her years of humanitarian work in Ghana, Greece, and California.

I’ll bring something better after I’ve explained why.

Photo by Joel Muniz on Unsplash

Wednesday night when I pulled up to the food pantry, the first shock of the evening was that it was run not by our county or state government, but by a coalition of Christian groups based in another town. Beyond SNAP benefits, there is no other public food aid in our community. 300 kits are given to kids in elementary and middle schools each week. The food selections avoid the most common food allergies, are familiar, shelf stable, and are things kindergarteners can prepare without knives, can openers, or extra ingredients beyond hot water, which in a pinch, can be from a tap.

OMG.

About eight sisters from the ward showed up with donations, which was a miracle for the food pantry because their weekly shipment was late and possibly not coming. We put together about 185 kits from what we’d brought, which looked like a lot until I understood that it was only three days’ worth which might get them to their next shipment. Maybe. Fingers crossed.

We should’ve brought more. Waaay more.

Afterward, I talked with the director. They worked with local grocery stores, restaurants, and a few backyard famers, but one of the biggest challenges was getting donated food from these sources to the food panty in a timely manner. They needed drivers with gas money, something I’d never considered. I asked what their most pressing needs were and was told sugar and flour—the holidays were coming up.

Photo by Joel Muniz on Unsplash

I went to my car and cried. I just didn’t know. In our mountain valley we have no homeless in our parks or streets. I pay tithing. I pay generous fast offerings. In my ward, a typical family’s annual tithing contribution is greater than our entire ward budget. How can there possibly be 300 elementary school kids who are this food insecure in our town? And why the hell is the aid coming from a Christian coalition 25 miles away without meaningful participation by any of the six local stakes?

I could spend another 1000 words pontificating on church politics, culture, and ideology. I have thoughts and opinions. But frankly, that won’t feed one kid or make any difference.

The only way it changes is if we open our eyes and use our resources as Christ would.

So now I ask the food pantry what’s needed and bring what I can about once a week—case lots of 5 lbs. bags of flour, 3 lbs. bags of sugar, cases of canned chicken and tuna—whatever’s on their wish list that I can pick up and drop off when I do my own shopping runs. I’m not foolish enough to think I’m solving the issue, but if more people did this, nobody would go hungry in my town.

I have a huge third acre garden that we built during Covid that’s been fallow for three years because it didn’t make sense for us to continue to grow more food than we could eat or preserve. That’s still true, but now the carrots, potatoes, and onions won’t be for us, they’ll be for the food pantry. That’s my new spring/summer project. I’m a little slow on the uptake, but I’m understanding better what privilege looks like. Thanks to Sister Charity’s example, after wasting too much time waiting to be asked, I’m finally seizing the initiative to create my own callings and ways to serve.

It’s oddly empowering.

I truly believe in doing good works in secret. I’d never share any of this except to call attention to the needs that are increasing exponentially in the coming weeks. Federal SNAP benefits—what replaced the food stamps program—will cease at the end of October due to the government shut down. Local food banks and pantries that supplemented SNAP benefits or provided food for those who didn’t qualify are going to be under tremendous pressure. People will go hungry.

Feed my sheep. I can’t feed the multitudes, but I can feed the one. You can too.

Photo by Aaron Doucett on Unsplash