ECW Annual Meeting, 125th Anniversary, Oct. 15, 2015 (full size gallery)
Catherine received a certificate and a check for a grant to renovate our kitchen from Cindy Helton, UTO Coordinator for the Diocese of Virginia. Cookie, Eunice, and Betty accompanied Catherine to the meeting which was special in itself as it was the 125th anniversary celebration.
Bishop Gulick preached and Kirk Gibson, Development Officer for Shrine Mont spoke. Julia Randall, historiographer for the Diocese, did a historical presentation on Sallie Stuart. After the meeting there was a quick detour of the St. Peter’s delegation to Carl’s in Fredericksburg for an afternoon snack.
Here are Catherine’s remarks:
"Many of you know that St Peter’s is a small church located in the small village of Port Royal. We have around eighty people on our church roll, with about 35-40 people present for worship each Sunday.
"Four of us are here today.
"Although Port Royal is surrounded by beautiful farm land, the people there live in what is known as a food desert, where fresh produce is not readily available to many people because they don’t have the transportation to get to the nearest grocery store, which is almost fifteen miles away, or enough money to buy fresh produce if they’re lucky enough to get a ride to the grocery store.
"So about a year ago, our congregation started a monthly food distribution of fresh produce. Once a month, our Junior Warden drives down to the Northern Neck Food Bank and gets all sorts of fresh produce that the ECW, with the help of others in the church, bags up and distributes to people in the community who need and want it.
"Currently, we are serving almost ninety people a month. As the months have gone by, we are starting to get to know these people. Some of them even come early to help us bag the food and distribute it.
"Last month, one man got a ride to the church. He took his bag and went to back to the car. As we were loading other bags into the car, I noticed that he was going through his bag—and then he found what he was looking for—the jar of peanut butter that we had included as a protein source. He pulled the jar out of the bag. He opened it. And then I realized that he was going to eat that peanut butter right there on the spot. He was obviously hungry.
“Wait,” I said. “Let me go in and get you some crackers to go with that.” I looked up in our cabinet and found some crackers, and the man took them and started eating his peanut butter.
"Hungry people are all around us. According to the World Council of Churches, over 795 million people in the world go to bed hungry each and every night. That’s over 10 percent of the world’s population. And some of these people are our neighbors.
"At St Peter’s, food is abundant. We enjoy cooking and eating together. But over the past several years, it’s become clear to us that our job is to share our abundance with the broader community—sharing what we have is an issue of justice.
"And so we have chosen to address the Fourth Mark of Mission, to transform the unjust structures of society, to challenge violence of every kind and to pursue peace and reconciliation, by broadening our food ministry—first with this fresh produce distribution, and now with the upgrading of our church kitchen, the only decent kitchen available for public use within about a fifteen mile radius.
"Once our kitchen has been upgraded, we can invite neighborhood children to come cook afternoon snacks and adults to come learn about how to prepare the food they may have never learned to cook. We can invite children to come have lunch in the summer, or prepare food in our kitchen and take it to them. We can hold community dinners at our church. And most of all, we are thrilled that this work will someday mean that we at St Peter’s will be sitting down at the table with the friends we’ve made, all of us sharing food together as one body brought together through God’s love.
"Let’s pray now. This prayer is from the World Council of Churches. Lord, help us to recognize you in the vulnerable people among us. Help us to be of service, even before being asked for assistance. Teach us to listen to them, to learn from them, to be transformed by them—so that there is no longer “them and us,” but only your beloved children—no longer strangers, but neighbors, in whose faces we see the face of Christ. Help us all work toward a world in which all people can lead dignified, loving and fulfilling lives. Amen.
"On behalf of the ECW, Vestry and congregation at St Peter’s Episcopal Church and the wider community in Port Royal, Virginia, I thank all of you for the part each one of you played in making possible this grant that we have received from the UTO to upgrade our church kitchen."