Make a Difference this Mother's Day
April 21, 2009
Raymond Williams didn’t think he would ever have to depend on the Bosco Food Kitchen for a meal again. As Mother’s Day nears, he remembers how hungry he was as a child, walking to Bosco with his mother, Lucille. Even though he was just 3 years old, he remembers the wonderful smell of home-cooked food as soon as they walked in the door. His mother taught him to sit quietly and eat everything on his plate. Then the growling in his stomach went away.
Bosco helped Lucille stretch her meager paycheck from working at a local laundry. Lucille stood for hours each day in hot steamy rooms washing, bleaching and ironing bedding for local hospitals. It was grueling work, but her strong example taught her three children the dignity of work.
Since getting his carpenter’s license years ago, Raymond has worked steadily for a local housing contractor. But the housing downturn cost him his job two weeks ago. Now, decades after his mother first brought him to the Food Kitchen for a good meal, Raymond must stand in line at Bosco to eat once again.
“I can’t find work anywhere, Father,” he told me. “Even places that always used to take people on – like the sawmill – aren’t hiring any more.” Raymond is one of hundreds of men and women with families who have lost their jobs in Selma because of the faltering economy.
The same day I met Raymond, 3-year-old Benjamin walked into Bosco hand-in-hand with his grandmother, Hazel Green. I was deeply moved to see another generation getting the healthy food so needed to grow strong and healthy. Mrs. Green told me she is worried about her grandson, who was abandoned by his mother and is underweight. “I know Benny needs to eat every day to build his weight back up,” she tells me, spooning him rice gravy and green beans.
Mrs. Green sits with seniors in the afternoon, a job that barely covers her bills. “Bosco is a good place for us because with my health problems, sometimes I’m just too tired to cook,” she says. Hazel suffers high blood pressure, as do many of the elders who depend on a good, hot meal at Bosco.
The hundreds of people out of work in our communities weighed heavily on my mind when I talked with our outreach ministers recently about rising food costs. Local Food Banks can provide lower cost foods to ministries feeding the hungry. However, our outreach ministers still find too many “empty calories”–cookies, snack cakes, candy and salad dressing—on the warehouse shelves.
This means they must purchase at higher grocery store prices the hamburger, vegetables, fruit, rice and noodles needed to feed the hungry. We must prepare over 200 meals every day at Bosco, 365 days a year, plus fill 400 food bags a month for shut-ins and the isolated poor.
I need your help now more than ever to feed the growing number of unemployed families. Every week I hear about more layoffs and cutbacks in our small communities. Selma has lost more than 500 jobs since December. It’s even worse in remote counties, where unemployment is a staggering 20 percent.
The working poor and those recently laid off are struggling with high costs and now, without work, they are even more desperate. When I see people lined up at Bosco, I am reminded of the long bread lines of the Great Depression.
People like Raymond, Hazel and little Benny depend on the Missions every day for life-saving meals. I depend on you to help bear the sacrifice of Christ’s command to care for “the least of these.” It costs $7,083 to pay operating expenses at Bosco for 14 days. I also must pay $233 every day to buy food for our rural food pantries in Lowndes and Wilcox counties.
I’m ever grateful our Missions had the vision 25 years ago to feed the hungry, a ministry that continues to this day. The Bosco Food Kitchen began as a collaborative effort with a local African Methodist Episcopal Church. Aware of the many hungry people in our community, we joined forces to follow Christ’s command.
We provided the facility and food, while church members volunteered as cooks. When their pastor got sick, we pledged to keep Bosco open, expanding the meal program from five days a week, to 365 days a year. Not long afterward, 3 year-old Raymond and his mother, Lucille, came to Bosco to eat for the first time. Today, little Benjamin is getting his first taste of Bosco’s home-cooked meals.
In the rural South, Mother’s Day is revered because mothers are so vital to the family, church and community. Raymond’s mother passed away years ago, but he still remembers her hard work and quiet dignity. He choked up and didn’t say a word, but I could tell how much he loved her.
Every day, I pray for you and ask God to watch over and keep you in His loving care. Your sacrificial gift of love will make a difference to little children and their mothers and grandmothers, the unemployed and those who are handicapped and ill.
In Christ's Service,
Rev. Richard Myhalyk, S.S.E.
