Friends,

Last week a small group of volunteers mostly composed of St. Luke’s members were worked as federal employees and members of our outreach committee, filled three shopping carts up with the food and then packed fifty bags of groceries to hand out. We had an online sign-up where we invited anyone affected by the shutdown to sign up to receive some groceries. We threw in the extra bean soup mix from the pumpkin patch, and a church member donated some dog food as well. A few of us hung out for about three hours while people came to pick up their food on that Tuesday evening. Now that big push to do something to help those acutely affected is over, I am still processing everything we learned. Here are some of my take aways: