For the past three years, our organization has served a predominately Hispanic community situated in a nearby mobile home park. When the summer of 2020 approached with the global coronavirus pandemic still raging on, we needed to adjust our efforts of service. Summer camp, as families had come to expect, could not happen. Reasons included: The park’s facility that provided space for camp was closed. Many parents felt uncomfortable - fearful even - to send their children outside of their homes as reports of COVID-19 dotted the community. As a result, entire families sheltered inside their small quarters. It became clear, however, that these families still had needs, so we pivoted our efforts to meet the needs that still remained within the context of summer 2020. Instead of facilitating a Summer Camp for the children, we would distribute meals to the families.
Walking up and down empty streets, we distributed flyers to all 180 homes -- some of the mobile homes housed 2 or more families. “SUMMER MEAL PROGRAM -- FREE” with the details written in English and Spanish. The first day of the program, we set up our station outside the ‘off-limits’ clubhouse and people began to show up. Some mothers left children home and picked up their meals while others had 5 or 6 children in tow, each carrying their own meal as they walked back home.
Sara Giguere, a student of the Institute for Global Outreach Developments, Intl. works with this community through our Immigrant and Refugee program. She helps with ELL classes for adults and has been a camp counselor during past summers. “I want to do something for this community,” she said -- and that ‘something’ was helping to distribute meals during her summer break. Each week, she would have another Institute of G.O.D. student join her to serve. Pictured above is Sara Giguere (R) and Emily Marotta (L).
During the summer, we distributed 100 meals a day! But more than that, we connected to the youth and families we had come to know from previous summers. “Hola, bueños tardé! Que bueno verlo!” Sara greeted the familiar faces of those who came to pick up meals. Institute students who work with our Hispanic Immigrant and Refugee program are learning the language of the people they serve. When mothers arrive to get meals, their reserved posture is instantly changed as they engage in conversation with Sara in Spanish.
Service to others is to be modeled and imitated. Jesus told his disciples, after demonstrating an act of service: “For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you.” (John 13:15) He expected his disciples, his students, to do what they saw him do. We experienced that imitation of service when two youth, a 10 and 12 year old, decided that after a week of picking up meals for their own families, they would help distribute to others in the neighborhood. They knew families who did not know about the program or had a difficult time picking up meals. Wagon loaded, they made repeated trips to houses dropping off meals. They, too, wanted to serve their neighbors.
Food distribution isn’t a lesser alternative to summer camp, it was what we saw as a need and what we could do. When circumstances, including government mandates, reported cases of a contagious virus, and a community gripped by fear, create obstacles, it seems the best course of action is no action. During Covid-19, any form of inactivity or neglect is easily excused with the mere mention of the global pandemic.
But that is not what we learn from Jesus. He refused to neglect his neighbor because he had a really good excuse for not healing a man on the Sabbath (Mark 3:1-5), or stopping the forward movement of a crowd in order to encourage the faith of a poor, sick and socially outcast woman (Mark 5:24-34). He did not let the accusation of an unquestionable adulterous woman excuse him from standing between her and an enraged, stone-throwing crowd (John 8:1-11). In other words, Jesus teaches us that using convenient and even socially acceptable excuses are not how we demonstrate faith. Instead, we model our faith when we ask God how to serve when obstacles are in our way and then do what he says. “And now, O Israel, listen to the statutes and rules that I am teaching you, and do them...” (Deut 4:1).
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