Last year, as Jason and I stepped away from youth ministry, we felt God calling to minister in the community. Our good friends, Jeff and Sherry, also felt God calling them into ministry. In talking with them, we decided to start a non-profit to serve the community. Instead of being associated with one church, the goal is to be connected with multiple churches. Association with multiple churches would allow us to help connect people in the community to a church near them.
We decided to call our ministry iServe Ministries. An immediate need we knew of was food. There are many children using a free/reduced lunch program at their schools. For many this means they eat both breakfast and lunch at school for free or at a reduced rate. We knew of a group in a nearby county that was providing some students on the free/reduced lunch program food for the weekends. We thought that might be something we could do in our base county.
Our goal was to provide a backpack each Friday with enough food inside to feed that child and its family for the weekend.
We started trying to get connected at some of the elementary schools last school year. In the beginning we felt a lot of opposition. Satan was not interested in our plan being successful at all. But finally things started falling in to place. At the end of the school year last year we had already begun delivering backpacks on Fridays.
This school year the ministry has gotten even bigger. Currently, we are delivering backpacks to three elementary schools and one high school. We are in the process of adding another elementary school and high school. Each backpack holds 24 meals and some snacks. We are including non perishable food items like jars of peanut butter, cans of stew, cracker packs, pancake mix, etc. Getting the food and backpacks has been made possible through donations by friends, family, neighbors, and churches. It has been so awesome to see what God has done and is doing.
Our goal was to provide a backpack each Friday with enough food inside to feed that child and its family for the weekend.
We started trying to get connected at some of the elementary schools last school year. In the beginning we felt a lot of opposition. Satan was not interested in our plan being successful at all. But finally things started falling in to place. At the end of the school year last year we had already begun delivering backpacks on Fridays.
This school year the ministry has gotten even bigger. Currently, we are delivering backpacks to three elementary schools and one high school. We are in the process of adding another elementary school and high school. Each backpack holds 24 meals and some snacks. We are including non perishable food items like jars of peanut butter, cans of stew, cracker packs, pancake mix, etc. Getting the food and backpacks has been made possible through donations by friends, family, neighbors, and churches. It has been so awesome to see what God has done and is doing.
We are excited to continue serving the community and to see what all God has in store for this ministry!
Galations 6:10 "Therefore, whenever we have the opportunity, we should do good to everyone- especially to those in the family of faith." (NLT)
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