The following story first appeared in the Winter 2004 Glenmary Challenge.
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Building Hope
Two mission-minded parishes made a new food pantry a reality in Bruce, Miss. Today, it serves over 200 families monthly in Calhoun County.
By Jean Bach

HELPING HANDS: Last summer, 21 volunteers from St. John Church in Honesdale, Penn., came to Bruce, Miss., to help rebuild what now serves as the county's food pantry. Above, St. John associate pastor, Father Joji Reddy Allam, shows off his mortaring skills.

What do you do with a building that has been donated to your mission but which has been neglected for 20 years, has a huge hole in the roof caused by a fire, has termites throughout and has no windows or doors that work? For the members of St. Luke the Evangelist mission in Bruce, Miss., the answer was: turn it into the new home for Our Daily Bread Food Pantry.

Our Daily Bread began serving Calhoun County in 2000, according to pastoral coordinator Franciscan Sister Mary Jean Morris. “At that time, the mission was in between pastoral coordinators,” she says. “The people of the mission, led by Scott and Vonda Keon, put the pantry together as a way to keep the church community active during that transition time.” The pantry operated out of the worship space in the Catholic church.

The local Methodist Church also began to help out. It’s the Rev. Rex Wilburn, the Methodist minister, who travels 100 miles roundtrip each month to pick up the food from a regional food bank for local distribution.

What is notable, according to Sister Mary Jean, is that Our Daily Bread serves anyone who qualifies as a resident of the county living below the poverty level. Many times, individual church communities will have food pantries that serve only their members, she explains. When Our Daily Bread made it clear that anyone who qualified would be served, it was a county-wide surprise!

The first month of operation 35 people showed up to collect an assortment of dry goods. The following month, twice that number came. Today, the pantry serves over 200 families in Calhoun County each month with more seeking assistance as winter arrives and gardens die out.

As the number of clients steadily increased it became obvious that the pantry needed larger accommodations. But it was also obvious it was going to be expensive to remodel the only viable choice—the donated building which at one time was a dairy barn.

“I learned of a parish in Naperville, Ill., which offers a grant each year to a parish or person who is undertaking a project that, without the grant, could not be completed,” Sister Mary Jean explained. She applied and St. Luke was chosen as the recipient. The members of St. Raphael Church collected money throughout Advent for St. Luke. The end result: $18,000 for the new food pantry.

“We couldn’t have gotten this project off the ground without that money,” Sister Mary Jean says. “We replaced the roof and tore all the wood out of the building. But there was still a lot of work to be done.”

That work was done by volunteers from the Bruce mission’s adopting parish, St. John the Evangelist Church in Honesdale, Penn. The parish gathered together 21 people and traveled to Bruce in June of this year. In one week, the seven adults and 14 teens finished the building, except for the final paint job.

“The adults were extremely talented in remodeling and the kids were very enthusiastic and took instructions very well,” Sister Mary Jean says.

The entire town welcomed the Pennsylvania visitors. Sister Mary Jean explained that, since there was nowhere to house the visitors in Bruce, the Methodist Church put them up in their classrooms. “There were 21 people sharing two bathrooms—one for the boys and one for the girls. They had to go across the street to the firehouse to shower.”

“People are still talking about the kids’ visit. I don’t think people had ever seen that many Catholic kids at one time,” she laughs. St. Luke has seven teens in their congregation. “The people of Bruce saw that the Catholic teens were just like their kids.”

“The Pennsylvania group really made an impression,” Sister Mary Jean says. Especially when they all showed up at the Little League game for Rev. Wilburn’s son. “It was quite a sight to see all those kids cheering for this little guy every time he got up to the plate.”

The official opening of Our Daily Bread’s new building was celebrated on Sept. 20 of this year. The mayor, Rev. Wilburn, Sister Mary Jean, Vonda Keon and the president of the local Chamber of Commerce (who is also the editor of the local newspaper) spoke prior to the ribbon cutting.

Since the move, sorting and processing over one ton of food each month has gone much smoother as has the monthly distribution.

“We are truly blessed to be a part of such a wonderful community,” Sister Mary Jean says. “Establishing this new building was a real community event and as a result, our ‘community’ now includes people in Illinois and Pennsylvania. It gives us hope in so many ways. We are so very grateful.”

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