An Extra Offering

The Greene County Baptist Association supports a food pantry called Grand Oak Mission & they have been in serious need. The pantry wasn't necessarily asking for monetary donations, they were needing food...and lots of it.  So, for the last several weeks, our church has been urging us to bring an extra offering each week to be donated to the local food pantry we help to support. That extra offering might be nothing more than a single canned good...but at this point the pantry needs anything they can get. 

It was brought to the attention of one of our small group leaders that they have even had to close their days a few days each week because they ran out of food.  And so a challenge food drive was on...small groups had 2 weeks to gather as much food as they could and in the end, the small group with the most poundage of food would have dessert served to them by the challenging small group. 

The contribution from our small group...all of this for $119.25, $0.75 under budget!

Our group, like several others, decided to take up a collection & then myself & another girl went on a shopping trip.  We knew that we could get the most food for our money at Aldi so that's where we headed...and I was quite pleased with our haul.  We loaded up our cart with apple juice, condensed soup, peanut butter, jelly, pancake mix, syrup, canned vegetables, cornbread mix, etc.  and headed to the checkout.  We of course had a limited amount of funds & were watching our pennies...but God had us right where we needed to be.  We checked out $0.75 under budget, I know we couldn't do that again if we tried. 

just some of the food brought in for weighing...

This past Sunday was weigh-in day & between 6 small groups almost 1,300 lbs of food was donated!  Honestly, our group got smoked in the final standings, but that wasn't really the point we were all just hoping to help others in need in just a small way.   The sad part is that I have a feeling all that food will be gone within just a few days.

& the results...way to go Northbridge Church!

I don't write this to toot my own horn, but more as a reminder that maybe you should take an extra offering to church with you this week.  Maybe that offering is simply one can of soup, or an extra bag of food from your weekly grocery trip, or maybe you'll decide to challenge the small groups or Sunday school classes in your church to a food drive!  Times are hard right now & we need to do what we can to help...even if it's just one can of chicken noodle soup.