May

Friendship Hall Dining

Traditionally, meal ministries have been sit-down inside dining events. At Watertown Loaves & Fishes, where I volunteered, we served in the basement until the pandemic hit. We had a decision to make, the choices were to shut the ministry down or start serving meals as takeout to guests in their cars. An amazing thing happened when we decided to keep the ministry going by serving takeout, our typical numbers for inside dining had been between 60 to 80 guests served. As we started takeout meals our numbers grew from the 60 to 80 meals weekly to over 100 meals, then within a few weeks over 200 meals and finally over 300 meals. Watertown Loaves & Fishes has even topped 400 meals served a few times! Since then, they continue to serve takeout and they have recently reopened their inside dining.

When we started our meal ministry at First in August, we felt takeout was the way to start as we were heading into the winter not knowing if COVID numbers would increase and knowing the flu season would startup. We had planned from the beginning that when the time was right, we would offer inside dining. We believe this is an important part of our ministry, as socialization for our guests is an essential part of their overall health and wellness.

The time is right, and we will start serving guests who wish to dine inside on June 13th, between 4:15pm and 5pm. We will continue to serve guests takeout that wish to receive their meals in their cars. We will not serve inside dining the second Tuesday of each month due to the Red Cross blood drives that are held every other month on the second

Tuesday of the month. We will serve takeout on those dates.

We will have a dedicated volunteer group serving our guests. Our volunteers will seat our guests, get their meals, and serve beverages at their table. Volunteers will interact with our guests; guests will be able to interact with each other and relationships and friendships will be formed. In Watertown, there was one table of widowed ladies. The group had some outside connections with each other, but none were friends with everyone at the table. It was fun to sit with these ladies and listen to their banter as it was clear that they had all become friends and their Monday night dining together was not to be missed! There were others that formed groups that dined each week that looked forward to seeing us, the volunteers, and other guests.

We are excited to add inside Friendship Hall dining to our ministry! We will plan from time to time to have special events like game night. We can recognize special events in our guests lives such as birthdays, anniversaries and support our guests with life’s challenges such as illnesses and other issues. It will be exciting to see guests dining in Friendship Hall and see God at work!