Wesley UMC food pantry blessed with grant funds

By Damon Relder
Wesley UMC, Corpus Christi
A few months ago Tom Davis (part of our food pantry leadership team) and I began sending off for grant applications to help with our food pantry. We are the distributor in two ZIP codes for Food Bank of Corpus Christi.
Normally the Food Bank has one outlet per ZIP code. In this past year the demand on the Food Bank has been so high that sometimes we are unable to purchase food from it— not because of a lack of funds but because of a lack of food at the Food Bank warehouse. That has forced us to buy food at much higher prices from H-E-B Grocery Stores or Sam’s Club or to shut our doors when we were out of food.
Until now our operation was solely funded through the generosity of our members. Anne Connor at San Antonio-based Methodist Healthcare Ministries of South Texas gave us a list of possible sources to find grant money for our operation. Most had already given out their funds for 2006 but encouraged us to submit grants in 2007. Two, however, were available this year.
The first was through the Texas A&M-Corpus Christi Foundation, which declined to help us (although the secretary for the group personally sent us $50 because she thought it was a worthwhile venture). The other grant proposal went to the Coastal Bend Community Foundation.
We just received a letter stating that the foundation would indeed grant us $3,000 for our food pantry. That amount is almost a “matching funds” grant, considering that our church puts about $4,000 a year into the ministry.
The money will enable us to always have the shelves stocked and to meet the increasing number of clientele that we receive.
Just thought all of you should know about the blessings we have received! God is good—all the time!