‘An outpouring of love'

Hundreds receive food from local church

Friday, Nov. 27, 2009

Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photos by BOB RENNEISEN Early arrivals line up outside Calvert County Baptist Church in Prince Frederick last Saturday morning to receive food being distributed by the congregation. An estimated 500 families received enough food for a week. E-Mail This Article | Print This Story Click here to enlarge this photo Cameron Smith, left, of Prince George's County and his friend T.J. Walker of North Beach get a hug of thanks from Eunice Wilson of Lusby for helping carry food in their wagon to waiting families in the parking lot of Calvert County Baptist Church. Click here to enlarge this photo Bags of food await needy families at the Calvert County Baptist Church's third annual food basket giveaway on Saturday.

"This is an outpouring of love," said the Rev. Darryl Godlock of Calvert County Baptist Church in Prince Frederick last Saturday morning, as he watched the first of about 500 families lining up to receive a week's worth of food being distributed by dozens of his church's parishioners.

For the third consecutive year, the congregation of Calvert County Baptist Church has managed to substantially increase the number of families served.

"It's a lot of work, a lot of time and energy," Godlock said, "but a lot of families are in need and a lot of kids are going to bed hungry; we don't want to see that happen."

The congregation's annual effort originally was the idea of one parishioner.

"It was a vision of my wife, Sandra," said Henry Nicholes, coordinator of the event. "When she grew up, they didn't have much. There were 10 children and they didn't have a lot of food and occasionally someone would bring a turkey or something for the holidays. So she said, ‘You know what? Why don't we do something like that for people in the community?'"

"So we went to the Department of Social Services and got some names of people — we were looking for 12 families originally — to bless 12 families with food [the first year]," Nicholes said. "Well, that grew to 22 baskets — we wanted each basket to be enough to feed a family of four for a week. We bought clothes baskets and we filled them up with food. And each family also got a turkey on the side."

Last year, on the urging of Godlock, the congregation successfully increased its goal to 75 baskets.

This year, the church was offered an opportunity to partner with its parent church, the First Baptist Church of Glenarden, which sponsors the outreach program Shabach Ministries.

"Shabach has a food bank and they were going to bring down 1,000 bags of food for us this year," Nicholes explained. "We figured that with two bags per family, we would try to help 500 families this year. It's a huge job. This year we wanted to include St. Mary's County as well, so I talked with the Department of Health in St. Mary's and they have a list of needy families available for charitable agencies wanting to help out. We had a whole assembly line set up here last night, with people packing all the bags and wagons of food going around — we had this whole process going on."

The 500 families being served this year, a large increase over last year, "just exemplifies the need right now," Godlock said. "It's been a challenge and a lot of work, but it's been a collaborative effort between us, the Capital Area Food Bank, Shabach Ministries. We've been able to extend the ministry to St. Mary's County and even have some people from Charles County — wherever there is a need we're just trying to meet it."

Among those happily standing in line waiting for the needed food was Kristie Cusic of Mechanicsville with her daughter.

"This is a nice thing to be able to pick up food for the holidays," she said. "With the economy the way it is, a lot of people need help this year."

Dawn Redford from St. Mary's City agreed.

"I really like it. It's very helpful to us."

rrenneisen@somdnews.com