PHOTO BY JOHN FRYMAN / THE VILLAGE REPORTER
VOLUNTEER EFFORT… Sam Byroads puts canned items into a box designated for the Grace Cares Thanksgiving Food Box event at Grace Community Church on Wednesday, November 19.
By: John Fryman
THE VILLAGE REPORTER
john@thevillagereporter.com
For many years, Grace Community Church of Bryan has stepped up to provide food boxes for those in need throughout the Thanksgiving holiday season.
It has been the longstanding tradition of the church, through its own Grace Cares outreach ministry, to give back to the community in various ways.
Even though times have been tough for many families throughout Williams County this year, the demand for help has been greater than ever before.
“It’s an outreach ministry of our church that we love to do in response to Christ’s love that has been shown to us,” said Grace Community Church Pastor Dave Sherwood.
“The blessings that he’s given to us like in the Old Testament when Abraham was called, and God told him he would be blessed so he could be a blessing to the rest of the world. We feel that’s our calling as well. If we’ve been blessed, we can bless others in our community.”
Sherwood, who has served as pastor for the past two years, knows the importance of meeting the needs of the community.
“The church has always been focused on meeting the needs of our community,” said Sherwood. For years, we have done various ministries that reach out to and provide for the tangible needs of our community. It includes the Thanksgiving Food Box distribution.”
Sherwood pointed out that the food box distribution was previously done at Christmas time, but in more recent years it was switched to Thanksgiving time to help provide for families a little earlier.
“Our people inside the church didn’t get overloaded between the food box distribution and the Toys for Tots distribution going on at the same time,” commented Sherwood.
It takes a lot of time and effort from church members to go out and eventually collect food items for the Thanksgiving Food Box distribution.
Throughout the year, the church collects and purchases items to go into those boxes, which are stored at the church.
“There are donations that are made to Grace Cares,” noted Sherwood. “Whether it’s food items or money, Grace Cares does the shopping locally but also goes through the Toledo Food Bank.
“We were able to order from them (Toledo Food Bank) and send a truck out to Toledo once a month to pick up food items and store them for this event.”
Once the Thanksgiving season arrives, Grace Cares sends notices to people to sign up to receive the food boxes and also sends out notices to church members to volunteer for this.
“Not only are the food items collected and everything, but also then we have to assemble the boxes and set them up in the fellowship hall and classrooms,” said Sherwood.
Sherwood credited associate pastor Stephanie Widney, who also oversees the Grace Cares ministry and does a great job of organizing the distribution and implementing the packing of the boxes.
Among the items they’ll receive are staple items such as canned vegetables, pasta, beans, rice, pancake mix, frozen meat, peanut butter, flour, sugar, as well as cleaning supplies.
“It’s quite the variety that goes into these boxes,” said Sherwood. In August, Grace Cares hosted a Back-to-School Food Box distribution event, which attracted 50 families.
There were 150 families who had received Thanksgiving Food Boxes on Thursday, November 20. “With the recent government shutdown, a lot of people were unable to get their benefits to help them,” said Sherwood.
“So, this comes at a critical time for them. We’re glad to be able to provide this and to be able to help families, the adults, and the kids, and all of them can have nutritious foods and the supplies they need, particularly as cold weather hits and it’s tough to make ends meet sometimes in our current economy.”