Nick was right. By the time Kat got to SouledOut the next morning, people had already brought boxes and shopping bags full of canned goods and nonperishables and were dumping them into the donation bin. By the time worship was over, Kat saw that the bin for the food pantry was nearly full—both from regular SouledOut members and from stuff collected by the sisters in the Yada Yada Prayer Group.
Which was great! Except—where were they were going to store all this stuff until next Saturday?
True to her word, Bree went around with her notebook after the service, asking people if they’d like to sign up as a volunteer for the food pantry. A whole crowd of teenagers was signing up.
Yikes. What if they had too many volunteers?
Kat and Nick counted the long tables that usually came out for the Second Sunday Potluck and talked about how to set up the pantry. A separate table for different kinds of food? A table for fruits and vegetables, a table for canned meats and main dishes, a table for condiments and miscellaneous, a table for desserts and sweets, and a couple of tables for whatever the grocery store donated. Bread and baked goods? Dairy products? Fresh fruits and vegetables? Well, semi-fresh at least. They wouldn’t know until Thursday, which was when Mr. Hernández said they could come to the back of the store and pick up some boxes of stuff pulled off the shelves to make room for new deliveries.
When they reported to Pastor Cobbs after the service, he said he’d have a letter ready for them by the time Nick got to the pastoral meeting Monday night. “But if you could get the waiver notarized, Nick, I’d appreciate it—wait, that won’t work.” The pastor scratched his nubby salt-and-pepper hair. “I suppose it’s my signature that needs to be notarized. Hmm, I think one of our trustees is a notary—I’ll ask him to do it.”
Kat felt a little guilty about the extra work for the pastor and promised they’d make sure everything was cleaned up after the food pantry and set up for Sunday morning.
The last week in July seemed to crawl like a tortoise trekking across the Mohave Desert—but also whirled by so fast, Kat could hardly believe it when Friday, August first, arrived. It was the last day of the Summer Tutoring and Enrichment Program at Bethune Elementary. Yusufu Balozi came dressed in a shirt and tie and presented her with a gift—a small wood carving of a mother with three children. A little sticker on the bottom said Made in Uganda. Yusufu grinned wide and pointed at the woman. “That is you, Miss Kat! And Kevin and Latoya and me!”
Kat turned the carving this way and that. She was touched . . . even though the carving was of a native woman with a baby at a bared breast and tightly coiled hair, and the other two children clung to her skirt.
Latoya decided she wanted to give Kat a gift too and pulled a hair rubber with a little red bead off one of her braids and wound it around a clump of Kat’s hair. “Don’t ever take it off, Miz Kat,” the little girl said solemnly.
“Thank you, Latoya.” Kat gave her a squeeze. “It’s a very sweet gift and will remind me of you.” Which was true, though she definitely wasn’t going to make a pinky promise never to take it off.
Kevin decided to make her a card with the art supplies. The outside of the folded piece of paper said “I LIKE MATH” in bubble letters, and the inside said “GOODBYE from KEVIN.” It was decorated with pluses, minuses, and division signs. Well, if Kevin liked math, Kat could chalk up her six weeks of tutoring at STEP as a huge success.
After a short assembly in the gym, which included any parents who showed up, where each of the kids received a certificate of completion, the last morning was spent as a “field day” out on the playground, with three-legged races, tug-of-war, and a marshmallow-and-spoon relay, followed by grilled hot dogs, potato chips, and ice cream bars. Not a veggie to be seen. Kat sighed. She thought by now Mrs. Douglass would’ve made some effort to include some healthier choices.
Kat had to excuse herself before the hoopla was over, as she’d agreed to a double shift at the coffee shop today in order to take Saturday off. But Mrs. Douglass called to her before she got out the gate. “Just a minute, Kathryn! I have something for you.” Kat waited as Bethune’s principal, dressed for the day in white athletic pants with turquoise piping down the leg and a white and turquoise T-shirt, met her at the playground gate.
“Here.” Avis handed her an envelope. “I thought you might like to have a copy of the recommendation I mailed to the school board. And”—she also handed Kat a package, shirt-box size, tied with red, white, and blue ribbons—“just a little appreciation gift for the fine work you did this summer. I think you’re going to make a fine teacher.” With that, Mrs. Douglass gave her a quick hug and trotted back to the throng of children clamoring for seconds on ice cream bars.
Kat was stunned. She hadn’t expected to see a copy of the recommendation, much less a gift from Mrs. D. She was tempted to open them both then and there, but decided to at least wait until she got to work. Arriving at the coffee shop a few minutes early, Kat stowed her backpack and found a corner in the back room where she could open the letter and the package. Her eyes teared up as she read the letter. “I highly recommend this candidate . . .”
She sure was chalking up a lot of “Thank You, Jesus!” moments.
Slipping the ribbon off the box, Kat pulled out a canvas tote bag. On the side it said, “Teachers write on the hearts of their students, things the world will never erase.” Now she did have to fish for a tissue and blow her nose. “Oh, Jesus, please make me worthy of being a teacher,” she whispered.
“Hey, Kat!” One of the other baristas—the guy she called Billy the Kid—poked his head into the back room. “Is that food pantry thing you’re collecting for starting tomorrow? If so, we’ve got a whole bag of day-old bagels you could take with you, ’cause they ain’t gonna sell here. Still good in my not-so-humble opinion.”
Grinning, Kat tied on her apron and headed out into the main room. One more “Thank You, Jesus” moment.
Kat, Nick, Bree, Rochelle, and Conny were at SouledOut Saturday morning by eight o’clock to set up tables and organize the donated food. Even with the air-conditioning on, Kat was sweating from sheer nervousness. Would they get everything set up in time for the doors to open at ten? Would they have enough food? What if no one showed up and they were stuck with all this stuff?
Nick had asked Josh “Gonna be a new daddy” Baxter if he had a few hours on Thursday to help him pick up the promised boxes of food at Dominick’s in the church van. “A lot easier than making a dozen trips carrying those boxes across the parking lot,” Nick had told Kat later that night. “We definitely needed the van—we loaded at least six big boxes. We stored as much of it as we could in the refrigerators and freezers in the kitchen. But you’ll have to decide what’s usable.”
The whole Baxter clan showed up early on Saturday morning as well, including Josh’s home-from-college sister, Amanda. This generated a lot of squeals as Kat, Bree, and Rochelle hugged Edesa and Josh, the new parents-to-be, and congratulated Jodie and Denny, the grinning grandparents-to-be. “Hey! What about me?” Amanda pouted. “Doesn’t the auntie get any recognition? After all, I’m the designated Chief Babysitter.” Which earned her a round of hugs and congratulations too.
Then it was down to business.
Conny was given the “job” of entertaining Gracie in the nursery, and while Nick, Josh, and Denny set up tables, the women surveyed the piles of food stacked everywhere in the kitchen. Kat pulled open the doors of the two steel refrigerators—and gasped. “Ohmigosh, look at this.” Plastic containers of already-prepared potato salad, shrimp-and-pasta salad, and other ready-to-eat deli food filled one whole shelf.
“Hmm. I don’t know about those.” Jodi Baxter frowned. “I’d toss them if I were you, waiver or no waiver. What else did they send?”
Bree flipped her notebook to a clean page and they took inventory: ten loaves of bakery bread, still good. Carrots, broccoli, green beans, cabbages, and turnips—just a tad on the wilted side—still okay. Plastic containers of strawberries and blueberries, probably salvageable. Sweet rolls and coffee cakes, probably okay if not too stale. Dented cans, dated yogurts and puddings . . .
Several SouledOut teenagers showed up at nine, along with Yo-Yo Spencer and Leslie Stuart from Yada Yada. All of them were put to work hauling the donated food out of the kitchen and sorting foods by tables.
“Bags! We need plastic grocery bags!” Kat felt a momentary panic. She’d totally forgotten about people needing bags to take stuff home in.
“Don’t worry.” Jodie Baxter poked her head into one of the lower cupboards in the kitchen and pulled out a box. “We’ve got a lot of those stuffed in here.”
“And some people bring their own,” Rochelle reminded her. “Remember the folks who came to Rock of Ages? Most of them brought their own bags. But look—we’ve got more to worry about than bags. We need to decide how many people to let in at a time, how much food each family is allowed to take, stuff like that. Why don’t we get everybody together and decide how we’re going to do this?”
Kat was a little taken aback by Rochelle jumping in and taking charge—though she couldn’t fault her suggestions. Josh and Nick were assigned to man the doors, like Tony did at Rock of Ages. Bree with her handy notebook volunteered to sign people in—name, address, zip code—to get an idea of how many local people had found them. All the other volunteers would either accompany each customer one-on-one as they went from table to table, explaining how much they could take from each category, or were assigned to a table to help keep it neat and explain “what this is.”
As the hands of the wall clock nudged ten, Kat glanced outside. “Oh, Nick, look.” At least twenty people were lined up outside SouledOut’s front door. “Do you think we ought to pray or something before we unlock the doors?”
“Great idea.” Calling all the volunteers to join hands in a circle, Nick asked Denny Baxter, as one of SouledOut’s elders, to ask for God’s blessing and protection on this first food pantry. As he was praying, Kat peeked through half-closed lids at the circle of volunteers, young and old, hoping she would remember every face so she could thank them all personally . . . and her eye caught a movement at the double doors leading into the back rooms. Pastor Cobbs poked his head into the room, seemed to take in the tables piled with food and the prayer circle, and a smile spread over his face before he withdrew and let the doors quietly shut again.
It felt like a blessing.
Whatever it was, it was the lull before the storm. As the circle broke up and people took their places, Nick and Josh unlocked the doors and let in the first four people—a middle-aged Hispanic couple and two rather disheveled white men, one of whom had tattoos on every inch of visible skin. While the couple was being signed in, the other two headed straight for the tables.
“Uh, sirs?” Kat put on her friendliest smile. “We’re glad you’re here. But you need to sign in first.”
“Oh. Okay.” One of the men shuffled back to Brygitta’s table by the door.
But Tattoo Guy glared at her. “Why?” His tone was belligerent.
Kat swallowed. Good question. Did she have an answer?
Rochelle inserted herself between them. “Because that’s the way we’re doing it here. You need to sign in or leave.”
“Oh, tough lady, eh?” The man reached around them and grabbed an apple from the table, but before they could say anything, he turned and went back to the sign-in table, munching on the apple.
“Okay. Forget the apple,” Rochelle muttered to Kat. “But assign Denny Baxter to walk him through, not one of the teens. I’ll take the other guy.” And she scurried off with a couple of plastic bags.
Kat stood there, momentarily frozen. Why did she have these conflicted feelings? Grateful that Rochelle had stepped in and told Tattoo Guy what’s what—and annoyed at the same time. And what was wrong with her? If she was going to do this thing, she needed to develop more of a backbone.
Most of the people who came through were cooperative, though one guy let a “lady friend” into the line ahead of others who’d been waiting an hour. Several people complained, and Nick had to go out and tell her she needed to go to the end of the line.
Just as she’d seen at the Rock of Ages food pantry, about half the people seemed to be working-class men and women or single moms on welfare, some with children tagging along, who just needed help with the groceries. The rest, Kat guessed, were living in single-room-only “hotels,” a number with apparent mental problems, and a few who seemed genuinely homeless, their carts and bags parked outside the church.
She had to grin when who should turn up but Lady Lolla, dressed for the occasion in a full-skirted, peach-colored taffeta dress with a six-inch trim of feathers around the hem, which fell to midcalf. Kat greeted her warmly and took her around to the tables herself. “How’s, uh, Ike?” she ventured, hoping she’d remembered the name of Lolla’s “significant other.”
“Oh, not so good . . . stomach bothers him, you know. You got any cans of chicken noodle soup? That goes down easy.”
Kat searched the table of canned goods. No chicken noodle soup. Just dented cans of tomato and fat cans of beef stew. “Just a minute,” she said, then slipped into the kitchen. She’d seen some cans of stuff left over from potlucks and youth group suppers in one of the cupboards, but she didn’t turn up any chicken noodle soup.
She had to return to Lady Lolla empty-handed. “But tell you what,” she said. “If you come back next Saturday, I’ll be sure to have some chicken noodle soup for you. How many cans do you need?” Even if she had to buy them herself.
Sending Lady Lolla out the door with two loaves of bread, some canned fruit, and some of the fresh vegetables, Kat noticed that Edesa had taken one of the young women aside—a black girl who didn’t look more than eighteen, who had one baby in a front carrier and a toddler by the hand—and was praying with her. Seated in a couple of chairs, the girl was crying, and Edesa had an arm around her.
Kat watched furtively. How did Edesa know the girl needed prayer? Or know she’d be willing to let Edesa pray with her, right there with people milling about?
She glanced toward the front doors. Nick was outside, talking to some of the people still waiting, though the line had thinned. Something he’d said when he’d preached his inaugural SouledOut sermon two weeks ago about “Feed My sheep” resurrected itself in her mind: “Life is more than food and the body more than clothes . . .” He was quoting Jesus about that too, she was pretty sure.
And there it was, right in front of her. People were hungry, true. That was obvious by the number of people who’d shown up today—at least thirty. But this girl—and probably most of them, if they’d admit it—was hungry for more than food. Hungry to know someone cared. Someone who’d listen. Hungry for love. Hungry for forgiveness or encouragement or . . . hope. Hungry for . . . well, hungry for Jesus, even if they didn’t know it.
Kat suddenly found it hard to catch her breath. God had been calling her to feed people. But maybe giving them food was the easy part.
Was she ready to really feed them?
She might have to actually get to know these “food pantry people” as people God loved.
To know all of them by name.
