The Faith Food Pantry distribution will be held on Saturday, Oct. 25, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., the usual hours.
It is delayed for one week for four reasons:
1) With budget cuts in the USDA budget, Mississippi Food Network, provider of many of our groceries, has very little food available right now. A year ago, the food pantry was receiving about 8,000 pounds of farm surplus food each month, bought by USDA to keep productive farmers in business when crops produced more than anticipated. Farmers feed the world. However, this month Faith Food Pantry is scheduled to receive about 890 pounds, nowhere near enough to meet local needs. A week will allow leadership to find other sources. Already, some donors have promised to provide more, but it will not arrive in time.
2) God’s House of Hope has closed and the men moved to Kilmichael. They have been an important source of volunteer labor, and they won’t be available to help load food into cars. New volunteers must be enlisted.
3) Other regular volunteers and potential volunteers are working at the Gateway to the Delta Festival, and the pantry cannot operate without manpower.
4) Traffic from Gateway to the Delta Festival and the Faith Food Pantry would create too much congestion, and the sheriff’s deputies who usually direct food pantry traffic will be spread thin with two major events happening.
October is a long month, and there will be another full week after Oct. 25. Families the pantry serves often need food most at the end of the month, when “the month gets longer than their check.”
Food Pantry leaders Ben Kennedy and Joe Young ask for your prayers for the food pantry ministry.
The change in schedule has no effect on the Calvary Food Pantry at Parchman, and their monthly distribution will still be on Saturday, Oct. 18, from 7:30-9:30 a.m.
