Lenten Lunches begin at Presbyterian Church

On Feb. 18, Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the Holy Season was marked with the first of six Lenten Lunches at The Presbyterian Church. The season of Lent is to spiritually prepare people to walk with the Lord through his passion and celebrate his resurrection on Easter Sunday.

Pastor Mark Unrue opened with a prayer, followed by singing “Jesus Loves Me.”

Unrue spoke from II Corinthians 5:11 about forgiveness and referred to a book, “The Roots of Righteousness,” by Dr. A.W. Tozer.

"Have you had a time when forgiveness was hard?” Unrue said. “Spend time in prayer, forgiveness and reconciliation. If we practice that, it wouldn't be hard to forgive."

He spoke about Cory Ten Boom and her forgiveness of the Nazis, Jonah's reluctance to be a prophet, and Gods love and forgiveness for us.

“This is something that we should all practice,” Unrue said. “Are we willing to forgive others as God has forgiven us? Jesus has forgiven us, and we need to offer that to others."

The Lenten Lunches start at 11:45 a.m. every Wednesday through Easter, and different churches make the pies and the soups.

Kay Dunfee said, "This is our 55th year for Lenten Lunches. Today is the first Lenten Lunch, and we had great attendance, just over 100 people. All the churches came together, and we had a great time. We are starting our God’s Promises through Jesus Christ, and we invite everyone to come and share a great time of fellowship. We do it for six weeks from Lent leading up to Easter.”

This is Dunfee’s fourth year helping with the Church Women United.

“We schedule all the churches for the soup and pies and workers,” she said. “Christa Ciotola is our president, and Karen Bowman is our treasurer and secretary. All of us have been doing this for the last four years. We are grateful for all the churches that provide soups and the volunteers. We have morning and afternoon workers. We try to get new churches to volunteer. We have two ladies from each of the 12 churches that come and serve each week, and we have a different speaker every week.

"Also, the Fellowship of Christian Athletes come. They set up, help serve, they clean up and last year we had a speaker from there. This group of kids is such a joy. They really are fantastic. We are grateful for the help they give us too."

Proceeds from this event go to the Clothe a Child project.

“In the summer of last year, we helped 100 children with clothes and shoes,” Dunfee said. “This year we will work with The Salvation Army, and they get the list of children for us. Last year we spent almost $4,000 on the kids through monetary donations. It is so nice to think about the kids getting new clothes, and they are so excited.

"We have a lot of volunteers and Church Ladies United come and help. It's really fun. It goes really smoothly. Christa really pulls all of this together, and she does all the shopping. It's a great community thing. I hope it goes for another 55 years."