April 7, 2003

VOLUNTEERS from First Baptist Church in Idlou join members of Immanuel Baptist Church in Amarillo in helping with a program to feed the community's children on weekends.

Small Amarillo church puts on a big feed for hungry kids
___By George Henson
___Staff Writer
___AMARILLO--Hunger sometimes hits closer to home than most people would imagine, a small Amarillo church has discovered.
___Jan Fahnert, a retired school-cafeteria worker, first sensed a need she thought her church could help with.
___A little girl mentioned at lunch on Monday how hungry she was because she hadn't eaten since lunch on Friday.
___"The worst part of that experience was that she lived across the street from me, and I didn't know until that day that she didn't have any food," Fahnert said.
___She also recalled the face of a little boy who had charged all he was allowed at the school cafeteria. He couldn't have the meal of the day, only a peanut butter sandwich and juice.
___"His lip was quivering, and mine was too," she recalled. "I was bawling right along with him."
___A survey taken at the elementary school across the street from Immanuel Baptist Church revealed that the majority of the children's favorite thing about school was lunchtime--"because we have good food to eat."
___The message then came even closer home to Pastor Kevin Dotson. A young girl came up to him on a Sunday morning asking if he had anything she could eat. He asked if she could eat at home, and she shook her head no.
___As he sat with the girl and heard that she hadn't eaten since Friday at school, her stomach growled.
___"I couldn't help but cry," the pastor said. "God broke my heart that day."
___A survey of Sunday School classes found almost a third of the children present were hungry.
___Dotson left that day heavy-hearted, asking: "Lord, what can a small church like ours in a poor community do? We don't have the money to feed them."
___The need didn't go away, however, and neither did the church's desire to meet it. The church knew it had to do something to help feed the children.
___"Kids were coming to church hungry, and that was hard to believe in Amarillo," Dotson said. "Sometimes we just don't realize needs like that are there. Sometimes we just don't want to see it."
___Immanuel averages about 50 people in Sunday School attendance, and offerings range from $600 to $800 a week, just enough to pay the basic expenses of keeping the church running.
___Nevertheless, the church voted in January 2002 to start a ministry of feeding the community's children on weekends. They didn't know what they were going to do or how they were going to do it, but they believed God wanted them to do something.
___Church leaders began by serving the children doughnuts or bagels and juice on Sunday mornings.
___With an initial donation of $500, the ministry has grown to what is known as Immanuel's Café for Kids. Children may eat lunch on Saturday afternoons at 1 p.m. and a hot breakfast before Sunday School the next morning. The church also has begun a Wednesday night dinner to which parents are invited.
___Saturday's lunch also includes a Bible study and craft time.
___Donations from other churches and individuals are making it possible for the church to continue the ministry.
___"It's turned out to be kind of like the five loaves and two fishes in the Bible," the pastor said. "How can we feed all these children with that $500 donation we started with? But God always provides."
___God even provided a means for the church to feed the children during spring break, he added. More than 30 volunteers from the small church are needed to run the program, yet during spring break most of those people needed to be at work.
___Jeff Parsons, apartment ministry director with Amarillo Baptist Association, arranged for the youth of First Baptist Church in Idalou to serve meals that week.
___"Those kids really did a great job," Dotson said. "They came up here, prepared the food, served it and interacted really well with the children. They really got a lot out of it too."
___The testimony of Robert, one of the youth from Idalou, bears that out: "As I have been here feeding kids, I have seen things that would make the coldest-hearted man cry. A single parent with from one to seven kids living in a one-room apartment. The children are mostly skin and bone. I even found medical gloves on the ground around these children's homes. We need more churches like Immanuel Baptist Church to step in and help."
___Fahnert's love of children keeps her involved.
___"It just blesses my heart," she said. "People say, 'You do this all the time; you must get tired.' But it's not about the tiredness. What counts is the hugs and the smiles."

The Baptist Standard



News of religion, faith, missions, Bible study and Christian ministry among Texas Baptist churches, in the BGCT, the Southern Baptist Convention ( SBC ) and around the world.

---

Contents/ Masthead / Why We're Here / Links / Archive / E-mail us/ SUBSCRIBE!/ Signup for FirstLook