Stone Soup Kitchen Ministries

  Good morning everyone! Have you finished off your Halloween candy yet? You know...the candy you ostensibly bought for the neighborhood kids? Our house has a looooong driveway that the kids won't come up, so Mike and I have the tradition of passing out our candy with our neighbors (thank you Dorothy and Jeff!). The upside is that we get to leave all of our candy with them afterwards. The downside is that we leave all of our candy with them afterwards! We got some good news from Project Bread's special initiative called "Make Hunger History" this week regarding Massachusetts's Department of Transitional Assistance (DTA) funding: "The Senate Ways & Means Supplemental Budget was just released and includes additional funding for DTA caseworkers at the SAME LEVEL as the House version: $28M over baseline for a total of $176.6M! Again, this additional funding will allow the agency to bring on a significant number of new SNAP DTA caseworkers and ensure ...

  Stone Soup Kitchen opens at 4 pm on Friday evenings, located in Shepherd of the Valley Church on Washington Street in Ayer. **For Friday dinner, you must park in the lot off of Newton St and walk up to the first blue door unless you are disabled** For the Saturday food pantry, please come to the parking lot on Cambridge St. It is open from 10 to noon. * * * * * Dinner is open to ANYone who wants a good hot meal and some company...no need to bring anything but yourself unless you want to! From 4 to 5, we are open for those who want to get together and socialize in the dining room. The potluck dinner is available from 5 to 5:30 followed by dessert and our open support group, which runs from 5:30 to 6, if you'd like to stay for it after dinner. Our potluck this week features taco hot dish with various sides, dessert, juice, coffee, and some extra snacks to take home for the weekend. Our food pantry is open every Saturday morning from 10 to noon, same location. Come to th...

  Good morning everyone! I want to thank all of you who have stepped up to make sure that we are ready for Thanksgiving this year. I know it seems too early, but we have some friends who only come once a month, so we have to have all of the pantry supplies in place by November 7. Thanks to your generosity as individuals and as a community, I am certain that we will be able to help everyone who comes to us. We've never had to turn anyone away in the past years, and we're not about to start that now! For those who still want to help, it's not too late. Email me back and I'll let you know how you can help. Believe it or not, we've also already started thinking about our Friday Friendsgiving gathering for dinner too. It will be November 27 this year. Our friend Ray L just donated 5 amazing-looking apple pies that were fresh baked on Saturday over at the annual Pie Day at Saint Andrew's Episcopal Church. They are now in our freezer, waiting for the main ...

  Stone Soup Kitchen opens at 4 pm on Friday evenings, located in Shepherd of the Valley Church on Washington Street in Ayer. **For Friday dinner, you must park in the lot off of Newton St and walk up to the first blue door unless you are disabled** For the Saturday food pantry, please come to the parking lot on Cambridge St. It is open from 10 to noon. * * * * * Dinner is open to ANYone who wants a good hot meal and some company...no need to bring anything but yourself unless you want to! From 4 to 5, we are open for those who want to get together and socialize in the dining room. The potluck dinner is available from 5 to 5:30 followed by dessert and our open support group, which runs from 5:30 to 6, if you'd like to stay for it after dinner. Our potluck this week features a variety of dishes and sides, dessert, juice, coffee, and some extra snacks to take home for the weekend. Our food pantry is open every Saturday morning from 10 to noon, same location. Come t...

  Good morning on this beautiful Fall day! Believe it or not, after all the flurry of the past several weeks, including the end of our fiscal year, last week was relatively peaceful. That allowed me to get caught up on a few things and just to be grateful for all of the people who make what we do possible. I think you know about many of them, but they all deserve a shout-out. Telling you about them all might also inspire someone else to want to join them too! Gratitude and appreciation for all of the following: Wednesday morning packing crew, Friday afternoon dinner crew, Saturday morning pantry crew, Coffee Bar crew Shoppers for bread, produce, pantry items People who pick up and deliver to us Cookie bakers Those who arrange food drives Special projects like the Newton Street Festival Recyclers The Merrimack Valley Food Bank, the Community Harvest Project, the Boston Area Gleaners, the IC Credit Union Local civic and religious organizations, Scouts, Police and Fi...

  Stone Soup Kitchen opens at 4 pm on Friday evenings, located in Shepherd of the Valley Church on Washington Street in Ayer. **For Friday dinner, you must park in the lot off of Newton St and walk up to the first blue door unless you are disabled** For the Saturday food pantry, please come to the parking lot on Cambridge St. It is open from 10 to noon. * * * * * Dinner is open to ANYone who wants a good hot meal and some company...no need to bring anything but yourself unless you want to! From 4 to 5, we are open for those who want to get together and socialize in the dining room. The potluck dinner is available from 5 to 5:30 followed by dessert and our open support group, which runs from 5:30 to 6, if you'd like to stay for it after dinner. Our potluck this week features sausage, peppers, and onions with various sides, dessert, juice, coffee, and some extra snacks to take home for the weekend. Our food pantry is open every Saturday morning from 10 to noon, same...

  There are so many great things to tell you about this week! First of all, Franks and Firefighters went really well, and it seems that we will definitely be doing that event again next year. We discussed having it in the summer, because we found that lots of people came, but they didn't hang out quite as long as it began to cool off. Good to know! Another wonderful thing that happened is that one of our favorite friends got housing! It's a situation that we can't say too much about because of privacy issues, but there are many people who helped to make this happen, they know who they are, and we are all just thrilled. Thank you to everyone who stepped up! We also received a surprise donation last week from our friends at IC Credit Union . They support us and our community in many ways, not the least of which is giving us advice about handling the money you entrust to us. Sometimes I don't think that credit union employees, bankers, and CPAs get enough cred...