"Banner year" testimony: Cynthia o'malley

Nourish- to sustain life- is the word I associate with St John’s. Through community, we nourish others and the community nourishes us. An example is VISION, our food ministry. The VISION PROGRAM, in its sixth year, provides bag meals weekly to Mission for the Homeless and Operation Dignity. To date, over 37,000 bags have been delivered to our unsheltered community. I say community because this is not charity- it is an opportunity for our volunteers (both St John’s members and those who are not) to build community with each other, with the Alameda County Community Food Bank (ACCFB) staff and our Vision contacts.

The project began in the early pandemic and the small community of doers has grown quite large. Basically we provide a bag lunch that centers on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a hardboiled egg. Over 50 families provide the cooked eggs and sandwiches. Each week a small group of shoppers go to the Food Bank, returning with 300-400 pounds of fresh fruit, flip top canned protein and snacks. As the food bank does not have bottled water, another team from the Men’s Club purchases 400 bottles of Costco water every two weeks. That is 430 pounds! Another team acquires free water from local grocery stores. These 220 lunches are bagged by volunteer groups on Wednesday and Thursday mornings.

We also have a team that buys the paper bags, napkins and compostable utensils for the canned protein. The water costs are typically covered through a grant from the Episcopal Diocese. And yes, that involves another team, assisted by St John’s Admin staff. It is a way for us to get out of our St John’s cubbyholes and build community with others from a different service. It is in giving that we receive. Despite this being a large operation with the acquisition, processing and distribution of 600 pounds of food each week, it doesn’t feel like that. It feels like community. It feels like St John’s.