By Karen Boeck
Our church conference held a Food and Personal Goods Drive on October 28-29th. Chairmans Chuck and Shirley Kuchar took charge with signs, notices, boxes, bags, and lists, all in place before the drive. Chuck and Shirley have chaired this drive for many years though this year Chuck was a bit challenged as he just had shoulder surgery. Thankfully, Shirley picked up the pace for both!! Just after noon, members kept coming to assist in setting up the sale structure. By mass time at 4:00pm boxes were filled, and members were receiving goods from parish cars.
Members were busy dating every item and placing food in containers to keep it sorted. Things got hectic as the vigil mass is a remarkably busy mass! Though there were many helpers, the volume of goods was so large, we had to push a good bit of goods into our little pantry and try to catch up early on Sunday morning. At 5:30am on Sunday, before 7:00am mass, helpers arrived for setup and the catch up began.
All morning long, activity continued with a great amount of work done by our chairpersons, and workers. In total, SVdP members and non-members contributed 133 hours! With Barbara Lavigne, pantry manager, Chairmen Chuck and Shirley, and other dedicated helpers, the work of selecting, boxing, moving, and lifting continued. A special thanks to Terry Scott who generously helped in pantry storage. We determined we need a few young men to assist, since our conference consists of mostly retired, senior members. Our count shows that we collected 546 bags of food and goods, with our SVdP paper sacks being our most used bags! We also collected $1,270 in cash and $55 in gift cards! Our parish is extremely generous, and we so appreciate your assistance in these tough times.
We want to thank Father David Kulandaisamy, and our parish, for their generosity. And countless thanks to our chairpersons and pantry personnel, our members and spouses who worked long hard hours to receive and store our precious supplies for those in need. An extra thank you to members who answered the call to visit the families needing assistance in these turbulent times; they are the backbone of our conference.
We were fortunate to assist our Wickenburg SVdP Conference with overflow and outdated goods. The conference is very large and very inadequate, so any overflow is greatly appreciated. Thanks to God for a beautiful cool weekend for all who worked so hard to make this drive possible. God was with us – Thanks be to God!
