Two weeks of loving our neighbors
I am amazed at the call of our community to help. Our “Love Thy Neighbor” mission team is involved in Compassion inAction and I wanted to just share their efforts for the first two weeks of February as an example of their generous love. Our team is led by our Mission co-chairs, Jon and Patty.
After worship, on February 1st, members of the congregation joined together in our Hand-in-Hand room and made sandwiches for 120 sack lunches. Led by Muffett, it was a multi-generational endeavor as whole families, older adults, singles and couples got involved.
The following day on Feb. 2nd, our Love Thy Neighbor front line team distributed 60 of the sack lunches to the day laborers at the Van Nuys Job Center. We have alson been working in collaboration with LA Community Fridges to raise money to support street vendors who’ve been affected by ICE activity and on Feb. 2nd, we were able to order chuchitos from our Guatemalan street food vendor. She was taken in August and kept at a detention center for almost 4 months and released. She was told she could not sell her food for a while but is now free to do so. We also stocked the fridge for others to take when they are needed.
On February 4th, Patty (our Director of Outreach and Congregational Nurture) and Allie delivered the remaining 60 sack lunches to Kid City, a community center in LA that offers “wraparound services” that help kids achieve their goals.
On February 7th, the team - led by Andrew - spent the morning setting up food distribution and serving 325 people lined up at the Islamic Center Food Pantry in Korea Town. It was hard labor, but everyone was grateful.
On February 12, we again collaborated with LA Community Fridges and ordered 100 pupusas from El Salvadoran vendor! It was a 20 min service by our small team at the Job Center.
On February 11, the North Hollywood Interfaith Food Pantry came to pick up our “Souper Bowl" Sunday” donation: 294 soup cans collected for Souper Bowl, peanut butter, brown paper bags and diapers.
We are blessed with caring and loving people who feel called to be among our neighbors, offering what we have to help those in need. I am blessed to be their pastor.