During the devastation of Hurricane Harvey, Irishea Hilliard, senior pastor of New Light Church, had a bright idea.
A police officer was rescuing residents near the church’s east campus and bringing them to high ground.
“He took them to the church,” Hilliard recalled. “He ended up breaking into the building just to get them to a dry place. It broke my heart because there was no food there. And, because of Harvey, no one could bring any to them.”
The pastor found herself imagining a community food pantry in the building. “It was then that it was sparked in my heart,” she said.
Around the same time, Hilliard learned about Minnie’s Food Pantry in Plano and started a mission to bring the operation to Houston.
Now, about a year later, that dream is a reality.
New Light Church hosts the food pantry from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. the first and third Saturday of the month at its 7317 E. Houston Road location.
The operation opened in May and has already fed a number of Houstonians in need.
What makes Minnie’s Food Pantry special is the experience it offers clients.
The nonprofit literally rolls out the red carpet for those they serve — to help restore dignity and respect to clients.
The organization’s founder, Cheryl Jackson, could not have been more thrilled when Hilliard called with the proposition of coming to Houston.
Jackson’s parents, Minnie and Robert Hawthorne, were both preachers. They admired the work Hilliard’s parents, Apostle I. V. and Lady Bridget Hilliard, accomplished after establishing New Light Church in Houston in 1984.
“Little did I know that I, daddy’s daughter, would be working with Dr. Hilliard’s daughter,” Jackson said.
Irishea Hilliard took the reins from her father in 2018 and started leading the church.
Hilliard discovered Jackson on social media. “You don’t have to reinvent the wheel if you can partner with someone amazing,” she said. “We started talking about a food pantry.”
They found an ideal location at the east Houston facility, a building known as the New Light Church Love City Community Development Corporation, which is used by the congregation’s youth camp.
After some renovation of the space, New Light was ready to stock its pantry. Volunteers assembled boxes of nonperishable food items to give to clients.
The church is committed to the project, Hilliard added.
“When life finds you in a difficult situation or hardship, it does not mean that you have to be looked down upon,” she said. “It’s just a temporary season in your life. When you treat people with care and compassion, it goes further than food.”
Jackson’s own experience receiving food stamps is what eventually led her to create Minnie’s Pantry. She still remembers the women standing in line, men who didn’t want to be there and babies crying.
At the same time, everyone there was grateful to receive food.
“I told God to never let me forget that moment,” Jackson recalled. “That’s what drives me, that bad feeling. I don’t want anyone to be treated the way I was treated.”
When her father died in 2004, Jackson slipped into a severe depression. Her weight dropped, and she lost all of her motivation.
One day, her mother Minnie came by and begged her to do something, anything at all, to care for herself.
What drove her to get better was helping others. She pledged to her mother that she would handle her grief by starting a food pantry.
She named the service after her mother, and Minnie’s Food Pantry was born in 2008.
“If you think about your greatest pain, that will drive your passion,” Jackson said. “I was hungry. So, let me feed the hungry. It was a no-brainer.”
She served her first meal on April Fools’ Day with the tagline, “Hunger is no joke.”
“I thought, if no one shows up, then the joke’s on me,” Jackson recalled with a laugh.
She rented a 500-square-foot building next to an apartment complex. Clients showed up right away.
“We started serving 10 families a week, then it was 20 families a week,” Jackson said. “We started growing. Now it’s 3,000 families every month.”
Her mother saw the expansion the last seven years of her life — the service all in her name. “I was grateful to see that,” Jackson said. “It makes my heart warm that we’re still doing it.”
Instead of that initial 500-square-foot building, Minnie’s Pantry now operates in a 17,000-square-foot facility in Plano. There are also Minnie’s Food Pantry operations in New York and Pennsylvania. The nonprofit has provided more than 9 million meals to individuals.
“There was no blueprint for this, just a faith-print,” Jackson said. “And it’s only faith that will get me to the future.”
After Harvey, Jackson came to Houston. “All I knew was that there was a need there,” she said.
After countless trips delivering meals, toiletries, clothing and other supplies to those in need after the storm, Jackson wanted to create a permanent home in the city.
“This is a God mission,” she said.
She feels that divine intervention connected her to Hilliard to make both of their visions complete.
“We as children saw what our parents did,” Jackson said. “We’re two preachers’ kids now feeding our communities. Look at what we’re doing.”
Faith has been central to her journey every step of the way, she added. “I was crazy enough to believe I could do this, without having the money to feed people,” she said. “I believed God would touch the heart of someone who does, who will help me. That’s been my inspiration.”
New Light Church has the same heart in mission, Jackson said. “They answered my prayer for expansion, to partner with a congregation that understands,” she said. “It made all the sense in the world.”
Lindsay Peyton is a writer in Houston.
