Reprinted with permission from Humans of Calvert County
Something was on my heart and one day, I just decided to walk into On Our Own of Calvert County. I noticed a need. From there, my friend, Larea, and I brought them pizzas on Fridays. I knew that wasn’t enough. God wanted more from me and planted the idea of a soup kitchen on my heart.
I thought, how are we going to offer a soup kitchen when our church doesn’t have a kitchen? I told our pastor, “Pray on two words, Soup Kitchen”. A month later, I had this urge, God was really pressing on our hearts, “It is time to go”. I knew it was time for us to do something. I went again to Pastor Curtis and said, “What do we do?” His reply was, “Let me talk to Bernie (with Farming for Hunger)”. Before Pastor Curtis could even bring our idea to him, Bernie says, “I have this trailer and nobody is doing anything with it. I would like for it to be used, do you have any ideas?” Pastor Curtis jumped on the opportunity and told Bernie about our idea of a soup kitchen. They gave us a fully loaded operational food trailer! We met with the owners of the food trailer, Caney Creek. We meet them and they invited us to Real Life Church for a food drop. After that, they gave us the trailer and fully support us. We received the trailer four months ago. It was all God.
Helping Hands is a community outreach and we help lift up the community any way we can, either a meal, canned food, prayer, or helping them find services and resources in the community. We offer a free hot meal from our food truck every Friday from noon-2:00pm in the parking lot near On Our Own in Calvert and will feed anyone that needs a meal. We assist New Life Church on Tuesdays for their food pantry from noon-2:00pm.
We work with Farming for Hunger, End Hunger, and Hands of God. All the different outreaches work together. We need volunteers and canned items to help with the food pantry, we need donations to help stock our food truck. This is a great outreach, and we will take anyone willing to help.
Calvert County needs a homeless shelter. There is nothing in this county to help those that are homeless. With all the rain we had this summer, the homeless are left in the woods. SafeNights is only for a few months, but there weren’t any services for the homeless if the hurricane would have hit. We don’t have a place for homeless to go in the summer, when it’s really hot. We hope enough people will take notice and help with a homeless shelter and a soup kitchen.
We would like the churches and county services to come together to a central spot. Let’s get together and get this organized.
God keeps opening the doors and we will keep on going until He shuts them.