It’s 9am on Monday. Volunteers are heading out to local grocery stores to pick up food for today’s Pantry.
Every Monday and every day of the week, volunteers make their daily pick up to stock the walk-in cooler, walk- in freezer, and shelves for the Lacey Spring Food Pantry. Volunteers begin arriving around 8am to start sorting through food and getting things ready for our folks that will be coming in just a few hours. By noon, we take a break, have a bite of lunch, say a prayer that we can be the hands of feet of Jesus and open the doors to the Lacey Spring Food Pantry!
Beginning in August of 2018, the LSFP was providing food for approximately 35 households each Monday. Mostly people from Northern Rockingham County came to supplement their groceries. We were operating out of the basement of Grace Mennonite Fellowship in Lacey Spring. By the end of 2019, our first year, our pantry was running very efficiently! We were providing food for approximately 105 households. Frozen foods, produce and baked goods were weekly items our folks could choose from.
In March of 2020 everything changed. We went from our normal operations to “how do we manage this now”? Covid made us think outside the box. We moved part of our pantry to the pavilion behind the church. It was still cold weather, and the pavilion was like an open-air market. But we bundled up in our coats and did what needed to be done. The need for food increased drastically. Local grocery stores like Food Lion, Walmart, Sheetz, Dollar General, Target and Aldi continued to give, and God provided.
We depend on the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank for our USDA needs. Once a month, we provide food that we get at BRAFB. Produce, canned goods and meat that provide staples for our families.
We are now five years in operation. What a journey it has been! Each Monday, folks come that we see every week and new faces show up weekly. The need is great. Currently we are providing food for an average of 125 households each week. That’s around 400 individuals. We have a group of about 25 volunteers that support our Pantry. Some are picking up food at local grocery stores, others come on Monday and help with food
distribution. Our volunteers range in age from elementary age children to retirement aged folks.
We are working on enclosing the pavilion to be climate controlled. Temperatures in the pavilion during the winter can be around 40° and summer temperatures have been in the upper 90’s. We have also added a personal care pantry called The Lemonade Stand run by Leslie Neff and a clothing ministry also joined us, Vertical Connections Ministry run by Glen Adams.
The LSFP is a ministry of Grace Mennonite Fellowship but does manage their finances separately from the church. Our pantry hours are on Monday from 3-5:30pm.
World Food Day is Monday October 16th. If you would like to donate food to help our pantry, please call us! If you would like to volunteer, also reach out to us. And we always accept monetary donations. We can be reached at 540-820-2331, lsfpantry@gmail.com and you can find us on FB.
There is such a need right here in the northern part of Rockingham County but also everywhere. Our folks come from Harrisonburg, Augusta County, Shenandoah County and Page counties. We also have folks coming from West Virginia. Hunger doesn’t discriminate….
