Food pantry changes hours, seeks volunteers

Thursday and Friday of each week, the Food Pantry at the Millersburg Church of God near West Holmes High School is bustling with activity, Thursday being the day many products are delivered and Friday being the day all the distributed food is handed out to area families who can use a little bit of giving to keep food on the table.

For 19 years the food pantry has been humming along, but now it needs a few volunteers to step up and lend a hand as it continues to do God’s work in reaching out to help others in need.

“We have been blessed with some incredibly amazing volunteers over the years, and the people we have now are so devoted and loyal, but we are at the point where we could definitely use some new blood to help with those two days in particular,” said Dave Masters, pastor at the Church of God and overseer of the pantry.

Masters said one major change in the pantry will be the hours it is open to the public to stop by to pick up food on Fridays. He said they will cut the end time back from 4 p.m. to 3 p.m. because they don’t have the needed volunteers and there are so few people who come in during that hour.

“The one thing we want to make sure we are doing is providing ample time for every family who wants to come in to be able to stop by on Friday to pick up food,” Masters said.

The Thursday volunteer role is from 10:30 a.m. to around 1 p.m. and consists of unloading the food delivery truck and getting food into the pantry and on shelves. The Friday volunteer role from 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., when they would help with the distribution process, includes sorting goods, handling the fresh produce that comes in, loading goods into carts, loading the deliveries into vehicles and more.

“We have roles for people of every shape and size,” Masters said. “We can use younger people with muscle; we can use anyone with a heart to serve. But we simply need three or four more people to continue to make things work as they should on those two days.”

Masters said one opportunity to volunteer is for graduating seniors who need to get in the required volunteer hours for their scholarship admission to Holmes County Education & Community Foundation.

He said others may simply be seeking a way to serve others and their community while answering God’s call to reach out to others.

While Holmes County doesn’t appear to have a great deal of need, Masters said there are plenty of families struggling to make ends meet, whether on a regular basis or short-term needs.

The food pantry currently serves around 180 families on a weekly basis and last year doled out nearly 800,000 pounds of food to 20,002 people, and there is more to the program than simply the food. Masters said they also pray with those who request prayer and build relationships along the way.

“We continue to see more and more people who are growing older who have more month than they have money,” Masters said, noting families utilizing all the area food pantries include single-parent families or those who are on a fixed income.

There are other ways to contribute. Recently, a local company blessed the food pantry by selling it a box delivery truck for a very inexpensive cost. Masters said the truck is better than anything they could have hoped to find, and they were more than blessed when a local business heard of the need and donated funds large enough to cover a great deal of the percentage of the purchase of the truck.

“The one thing we make sure we do is spend every single dollar donated specifically to aiding the food pantry,” Masters said. “I am very tight-fisted with every penny.”

Other businesses and individuals have donated produce, canned goods and financially, and Masters said they desperately need a walk-in cooler/freezer.

If someone would like to volunteer, they can call or text Masters at 330-231-7058 or Shirley Proper, food pantry secretary and coordinator, at 330-763-1086. He said either of them are happy to answer any questions people might have.

If anyone would like to make a financial contribution, they can contact Masters or send a check to Food Pantry at Millersburg Church of God, 10643 state Route 39 W., Millersburg, OH 44654.