'No free lunch?' Folks at Holy Covenant UMC, Carrollton, beg to differ

BY JOHN A. LOVELACE
Special Correspondent

Whoever said there’s no such thing as a free lunch didn’t know about Holy Covenant UMC, Carrollton, and its amazing 2009 Summer Lunch Box Program food-chain partners, the North Texas Food Bank and Metrocrest Social Services.

From June 8 to Aug. 21, Mondays through Fridays, Holy Covenant expects to give away perhaps 14,000 fresh-daily box lunches to children and youths ages 3-19 who receive free or reduced-price lunches at school but nothing through the summer.

Here’s how Terry Fox, missions co-chair at Holy Covenant, explains it: “We are so proud of this program and want to share it! God placed this on our hearts, we made a phone call and He showed up with all the right pieces!”

“All the right pieces” included Fox’s phone call seeking expert advice from Metrocrest Social Services, which serves Carrollton, Addison, Coppell and Farmers Branch. Based on Metrocrest expertise, the lunch box program opened with proper registration and permission forms and personal and medical information forms in Spanish and English versions.

Registration continues daily. On the otherwise blank back side of both the Spanish and Englishpersonal and medical information forms, Holy Covenant advertised four free camps for kids K-6th grade: golf May 2, soccer June 6, cheerleader July 18, and karate Aug. 15.

Here’s how the food chain operates:

* By 9:30 a.m. Monday through Friday for 11 weeks, a North Texas Food Bank truck, at no epense to Holy Covenant, delivers cartons of box lunches, the exact number based on requests phoned in the previous day by the church.

* A church member unloads the truck, wheels the cartons into the church gym and sorts them on tables by amounts needed at four distribution spots:

The church

1. Davis Elementary School about a mile west,
2. Furneaux Elementary School about a mile east, and
3. A learning center at a nearby apartment complex.

* Around 10:45 a.m., drivers load food cartons into their cars or SUVs and deliver them to the
distribution sites.

* By 11:15 or so, volunteers at all four sites are ready with daily updated registration lists.

* Some children arrive early. The flow is steady but never crowded. Many remember to bring reusable cloth bags given by the church. As volunteers fill the daily orders and check off deliveries, it’s big-smile time on both sides of the table.

(The onlooker can’t help but notice volunteer Barbara Hunt at Davis Elementary or Della Swaim at Furneaux Elementary easily striking up a conversation with the sometimes shy or uncertain kids: “How are you today?” “Have a good weekend?” “Got any plans?” “Be sure to bring your bag tomorrow.”)

(It’s also impossible not to notice when volunteer Joanne Jennings at Furneaux Elementary spots a kid skateboarding past on the sidewalk, seemingly disinterested in but obviously aware of the folks giving food away under the shade tree. “Checking us out,” someone says.)

(“Hi, Jason,” she calls out. The boy stops. Wearing her black apron with the Holy Covenant United Methodist Church name stitched in white along with the UMC cross and red flame, she steps toward him, asking, “How’d you do on the reading test?” They converse privately but seemingly comfortably for a minute or two before he mounts his skateboard and rides off and she returns to the table. A teacher herself, she explains that Jason had tested well in math and science but needed some help in reading.)

* By 12:15 or so, the children – some walking, some on bikes, a few on skateboards, some in cars – and the free box lunches have come and gone.

The menu varies daily. Holy Covenant volunteers never know what’s coming. Each box lunch, packed by volunteers at the North Texas Food Bank in Duncanville, is a work of art – nutritionally balanced, healthy, colorful and fresh. And, because it is fresh, it is intended to be eaten by 2 p.m. or destroyed.

Registration forms permit parents to indicate which children, if any, have one or more food allergies, especially peanut allergies. Holy Covenant keeps a supply of extended-shelf-life allergy-sensitive box lunches provided by the Food Bank.

Missions co-chair Fox says pastor Rev. Andy Lewis’s three-week buildup during Sunday worship services this spring ignited volunteer interest. Rev. Lewis considers the 90 volunteers who signed up for one-week stints with the 2009 Summer Lunch Box Program “pretty impressive” for a congregation that averages 270 in worship per Sunday.

He adds, “This is part of our ongoing outreach to a changing community, now diverse with many Hispanic residents. Since our congregation doesn’t reflect these demographics, we have to build rapport and trust.

“We are trying to build rapport and trust through this program, and through the trust we are building, we are able to practice evangelism in two ways: first, by sending home the invitation to VBS and sports camps, and second, by giving our church members something concrete that they can easily talk about. They can tell others, ‘here’s something that my church is doing that I am proud of.’

Holy Covenant has long maintained a food pantry at the church, stocking it with donated food and with staples bought from the North Texas Food Bank at its standard price of 14 cents per pound.

In her absence, colleagues can’t say enough about missions co-chair Terry Fox, who, they say, “lives and dies with this program.” She enters each day’s new registrations into her computer, prints copies for lead  volunteers at the church and at the two schools, and e-mails around the circuit at all hours of day or night.

On this Friday ending the program’s second week, Fox, who works 4 ½ days a week in Garland, arrives at Furneaux School just as lunch box distribution ends but in time for a brief chat. She tells the visiting journalist that yes, this was her idea. “But we had no money, no volunteers, and I can’t be there.”

No such thing as a free lunch? Just check with Terry Fox to the tune of some 300 free box lunches per day.

This young man bears
and wears his own
witness as he departs
with today’s free box
lunch in hand.

Holy Covenant UMC Pastor Andy Lewis stands proudly
at Furneaux Elementary School with, from left, free
lunch volunteers Joanne Jennings, Della Swaim, Jake
Kuehl, son of Joanne Jennings, and Colleen Evans.

PHOTO BY JOHN A. LOVELACE