Feed My Sheep Ministry
On Sunday, we welcomed Rick and Pam Pulver, the coordinators with Feed My Sheep Ministry of Northern Va., LLC, in Bealeton, with Bealeton Baptist Church. Carol Grove and her grandson, Noah, also joined as liaisons between Grace Episcopal Church, Cassanova and the Bealeton Baptist Church. We would like to thank them for their very informative presentation.
The Feed My Sheep Ministry is an assistance program that provides food and supplies to those in need. There is no qualification process in order to receive assistance and any pertinent information that is collected is kept confidential and is not shared with local government assistance agencies. The participants have complete anonymity to anyone outside of the Feed My Sheep Ministry volunteers. Word of mouth is the primary source of advertising used by the Ministry, people who have used the resource often refer someone else when they are no longer in need of the assistance. In addition, the Ministry provides only food and supplies, no money, which greatly reduces the possibility of abuse of the system.
Food and supply items are collected from various local resources, including, Food Lion in Bealeton and Giant in Warrenton. The Food Closet also donates their leftovers. These items are then taken to Bealeton Baptist Church where they have storage capabilities such as shelving and refrigeration. Volunteers then package the items into grocery bags of equal size to be distributed to the persons in need. Any leftovers that are unusable, are given to a local farmer to feed their livestock.
The Bealeton Ministry currently serves three local areas. They rotate their distributions between these areas every three weeks. In the two counties closest to Bealeton, Feed My Sheep has the volunteer capacity to be able to deliver the groceries directly to the personâs home. Wednesdays are delivery days and routes include the Route 17 trailer park and the Johnson Hotel on Route 29. In the third county, Culpeper, they do not have the volunteer capacity yet, so the groceries are delivered to one point of contact and the people pick up the items at that personâs home.
Guidelines were provided to help with the types of items that should be collected.
- No chocolate or doughnuts, these melt and go stale.
- No glass containers
- No bulk quantities
- Items that are always needed include: cereals, oatmeal, mac and cheese, tuna, instant mashed potatoes, pasta, spaghetti sauce, canned soup, fruit, veggies and applesauce.
The consideration for Little Fork is âHow can we helpâ? There are several opportunities for us to get involved.
- The collection of goods and the delivery of them to Bealeton for packaging.
- The delivery of grocery packs from Bealeton to the Culpeper Point of Contact.
- Volunteering to work with the Culpeper Point of Contact to help with the distribution of the groceries directly to where people live.
- Work to increase the frequency of deliveries; by delivering groceries to routes or by picking up items for Culpeper location more than every 3 weeks if we can complete the delivery routes.
Jay and Molly Lewis will be visiting the Feed My Sheep Ministry this week to observe the operational side of things. Faith Dickerson is going to be in contact with the Culpeper point of contact. After they have gathered their information, the Vestry will consider how we might be called to be involved.
What an exciting endeavor for Little Fork to consider! If you have any thoughts or questions you would like to communicate with the Vestry regarding this consideration for an outreach opportunity please reach out to Mandi Dillion at [email protected].