'Feed my sheep': St. Luke Food Pantry nourishes bodies, spirits - Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal

'Feed my sheep': St. Luke Food Pantry nourishes bodies, spirits - Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal

Thomas Wells | Buy at photos.djournal.com
Skip Robertson makes his way to the next stop to complete his box of food.

By David Pannell

Daily Journal

TUPELO – In the Thanksgiving season, we stop to count our blessings, and for a while, some of us stop counting calories, too. Many of us are surrounded by so much food we hardly know what to do with it.

Yet the Thanksgiving season shines a light on a daunting reality: While some Americans have more food than they can eat, others don’t have enough, and sometimes what they have isn’t what they need.

Bennie and Ira Mae are in that category. Both are senior citizens living in Lee County, and both of them have a hard time keeping fed from time to time. Bennie lives alone in a small apartment with no family nearby, and he has a whole range of health problems.

“When I get down I just have to push through. The Food Pantry is really a great thing,” Bennie said.

Ira Mae worked all her life in a factory, but her retirement income will stretch only so far. She has family here, but they’re not in a position to help her.

“They need help themselves,” Ira Mae said with a weary laugh.

It’s Thursday morning, and Bennie, Ira Mae, and about 200 others are waiting for their numbers to be called at the Saint Luke Food Pantry, where volunteers gather every Thursday to distribute boxes of groceries. They’ve been at it for 21 years, giving away food to Lee County’s neediest residents, meeting a practical need in the name of Christ. The need is greater in Mississippi than in almost any other state.

Mississippi has rich, fertile soils that produce an abundance of food, and yet, according to the Kids Count Data Center, 20 percent of adults and 30 percent of children under 18 don’t have consistent access to nutritious food in Mississippi. Many of those people live in “food deserts” – places defined by the USDA as having a poverty rate above 20 percent and with 33 percent of the population living a mile or more from the nearest grocery store.

Many of these food deserts are in the Mississippi Delta, but many are in dense, urban areas all over the state, as well. Often the only food available in these areas is high-calorie, processed, ‘fast-food’ with low nutritional value, and people living in such areas have disproportionately high rates of nutrition-related illnesses.

The reasons for hunger and malnutrition are complicated and the solutions are politically charged. Regardless of the reasons, children and seniors suffer the most from this imbalance between those with more than enough food and those without enough.

Thomas Wells | Buy at photos.djournal.com

Saint Luke has been doing its part to right the balance between those two groups since 1995. Walter Burns is a retired school administrator and a member at St. Luke. He’s been working with the food pantry since it first started. He says he doesn’t worry over who or who may not be truly needy.

“We don’t try to sort ‘em, we try to feed ‘em,” he said with a grin.

Jason Martin is the youth minister at Saint Luke, and he’s been doing double duty as the Food Pantry’s director for the past three years.

“It started in a closet, and we were serving eight families a month. The founder of our food pantry would drive his car to Memphis to the Food Bank, and he’d load his trunk up and bring it back and that would be what they would have for distribution. That guy was Cliff Pickens , God rest his soul,” Martin said.

Martin is quick to point out that their ministry is rooted in the teachings of Jesus, and that Christians have a duty to the feed the hungry.

“Our job is not to judge them. When you look at the Bible it’s pretty simple. Jesus said, ‘When I was hungry you fed me.’ You don’t have to look past that scripture to know you’re doing the right thing. I’m standing on that,” he said.

The pantry serves 1,200 families a month. They collect, sort, and distribute 20,000 pounds of food per week with a rotating crew of about 25 volunteers, as well as some help from inmates through the Sheriff’s department. The food goes out in pre-packed boxes filled with canned goods, rice, pasta, produce, and sometimes frozen meat. The boxes weigh 40 to 60 pounds, and each family gets a box. Recipients can receive only one box per month, and they must verify they are Lee County residents, and that they fall under a maximum income requirement.

Martin says the need for the boxes is overwhelming.

“The number of families we serve per month has doubled since 2011 – from 600 families in ‘11, to 1,200 in ‘16.” he said. “They’re making a drive to Tupelo from all corners of Lee County, and they may wait an hour to get a box of food that weighs 40 pounds to help their families.

“The need is always there and I think probably as long as society is the way it is, we’re going to have that need. The way we are in this culture, there are always going to be people that are underserved.”

He added, “You look at Lee County and you think people here are doing OK. You look in the cracks and the crevices and you see those places where people are suffering. We’re just a stop-gap, and we know that. But there are so many people in need that we can’t quit doing what we’re doing.”