"Welcome to our first e-newsletter! We look forward to telling you more about United Thank Offering and keeping you in the loop about grant stories, webinars, and all things UTO. Through this newsletter, which will be sent out monthly, we hope to share with you ideas for making ingatherings more fun and successful, information about our grants, and the story of this remarkable 126-year-old ministry. Our ultimate goal is for every Episcopalian – man, woman, and child – to learn and practice gratitude.
Each month we’ll share a story of a UTO grant site with you. If you have a great UTO grant story to tell, please email our Missioner a photo and article, and we’ll showcase your good work here!
Here’s an update from the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia about the 2015 grant to update the kitchen at St. Peter’s Church to improve/change the handling of its food pantry. Now, instead of handing out bags, visitors shop for their groceries and, better yet, can come and have a meal with folks from the church.
Here’s the report from St. Peter’s:
“The congregation hosted the first luncheon for people who come to the food distribution on Wednesday, July 13, 2016, partly in response to the killings of black men and then the killings of police officers that happened earlier in the month throughout the nation. Parishioners wanted to be intentional about sitting down with the people who come to the food distribution, including the black members of our community. Eleven people who come to the food distribution came to the luncheon, including a homeless family with their two young children, two couples, and some older widows in the area. Nine members of St Peter’s came to lunch. Everyone sat together, and two parishioners served each person a homemade meal of barbecue chicken, string beans, macaroni and cheese, fruit, and assorted desserts. At first the conversations were rather awkward, but as the meal went on, everyone relaxed. Some of the conversation centered around food – what people like to cook and what people like to eat.
“One of the things we hope to accomplish through these luncheons is to figure out the best way to expand our ministry to the community through the use of our kitchen – we want it to truly be a community kitchen. One idea that came out of that first lunch is for people who come to the food distribution to gather in the kitchen and cook their favorite recipes, using ingredients that we provide, so that we all can share cooking hints with one another. Then, we could all eat the food together, or box it up and take it out to people in need in the community. Our ongoing conversations are revealing that the older people like to cook and know how to prepare a variety of foods, while many of the younger people who come to the distribution are not familiar with various types of produce and have no idea how to cook some of the food that we make available to them. Another idea is to have the older women who love to cook share their knowledge with the people who have never learned about cooking and now have young children who would benefit if their parents learned some of these cooking skills. We also learned that some of the older people who come to the distribution really enjoy having the opportunity to socialize, as some of them live alone and their families are not close by. To provide some sort of ongoing social gatherings for these people centered around our kitchen is another idea that may become a reality. Through these ongoing conversations and gatherings, we hope to continue to pursue peace and reconciliation in our community.
“We are so thankful to the UTO for awarding us the grant that has helped us upgrade our kitchen and has given us new opportunities to carry God’s love out into the world by doing what Jesus asked us to do: ‘Feed my lambs. Tend my sheep.’ We are looking forward to our next luncheon this month with more people from the distribution, when we will gather more ideas. Then, we will be intentional about expanding what we are already doing by bringing some of the ideas that have grown out of these conversations into what we hope will be an ongoing healing, reconciling reality in our community through the expanded use of our kitchen.”