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Eighteenth Sunday of the Year
3 August 2008
Dear Friends in Christ,
In 1981, the Episcopal churches of Greenville started a program called Project Host, the purpose of which was to provide healthy meals for the poor in our community, and the plan called for meals to be served by Project Host from Sunday through Friday, leaving only Saturday without service. Into this breach stepped Iris Minette, a parishioner of St. Mary’s, who organized the Saturday Bag Lunch program which would fill the one gap left by Project Host, and for the past twenty-seven years, Iris’s leadership has been vital to the continuation of this beautiful service in our community. But after almost three decades of providing meals every Saturday, it’s time for Iris to take a break, and based on the recommendation of the leadership of Project Host, the time has also come for an end to the Saturday Bag Lunch ministry.
When all of this began in 1981, there was no other food service in Greenville available on Saturday, but today there are four different sites within an easy walk of the Project Host building on Academy Street which provide food each Saturday of the year. Because of the availability of these other services and the constant struggle to maintain the principal work of Project Host during the rest of the week, Iris Minette (after extensive consultation with Sally Ryan, the director of Project Host) made the following recommendations to me, which I have accepted:
1. Starting in September, all contributions to the Poor Boxes in St. Mary’s Church will now be directed to Project Host to assist them in providing food service from Sunday through Friday each week at their facility on Academy Street. 2. The volunteers who have assisted the Saturday Bag Lunch program are now encouraged to assist at Project Host either on any weekday or on a designated Sunday during the year. From Monday through Friday, individuals are welcome to volunteer their service, and to do so, you should contact Sally Ryan at 864.235.3403 or projecthost@gmail.com. On Sundays, however, instead of single volunteers helping as on weekdays, there is need for a group to take responsibility for every facet of the service, and if there are enough people at St. Mary’s interested in doing this, we would be able to take specific Sundays of the year. This effort, however, would require a single coordinator to do what Iris has done for the past 27 years, though on a much smaller scale. Anyone willing to take on this responsibility for coordinating periodic Sunday service, should be in direct touch with me.These changes will take place at the end of August, and the final day of Saturday Bag Lunch will be 30 August 2008. Thank you to everyone who has served the poor of our community through this ministry, most especially the indispensible Iris Minette.
Father Newman