December 30, 2024 newsletter

 

This is my last letter to you in 2024! I can't believe the year is over already. Sure, there were days that I thought would never end, but overall, the weeks and months just flew by. If you had time to read my last letter, before Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa, then you know that Living Water Fellowship, the church that gave Stone Soup Kitchen a home back in 2019 has been summarily and unilaterally closed by the district that oversees them, effective February 1, 2025. The local congregation was given no voice in the matter, and the congregants are hurting over the decision and the way it was done. If you are a member of a local faith community, please be on the lookout at your services for people who may be showing up, looking for a new home. We are extremely grateful to this church and the former pastor, Bob Brachel, for providing us with a place to do our work for the past 6 years.

Of course, Stone Soup Kitchen also needs a new home, and we have been invited to move in by Pastor Susan Gaeta and her congregation at Shepherd of the Valley (SOV), which owns the former Federated Church on Washington Street! All of the details are currently being ironed out, and the move will take place in late-mid January...we hope! I will not be meeting with the movers until later this week, so all the details will be forthcoming in next week's letter. We are absolutely thrilled to have the opportunity to be located so close to downtown, and are extremely thankful that SOV wants to provide us with our new home! God is good, all the time.

YES, we will need a LOT of help with the move. Since the time we were given to vacate is so short, and we learned about it just before the holidays – ever try to get professional people to call you back during this time? – we are resorting to using a professional moving service for the bulk of our move. However, we will be packing everything ourselves, and there will be things to move that we will want to do ourselves, with the aid of some friends with pickup trucks or big vans. After we have the exact dates set, I will be letting you know about the details of the plan. What I can say right now is that I plan to be at Stone Soup Kitchen from (probably) 9 to 5 on several days, and maybe an evening or two if necessary, and anyone who can come and help during that time can just show up, or email/text me. I have a list of things that need to be done!

Just a couple of other things to let you know about. First, we want to thank AVS, Advanced Vacuum Systems here in Ayer, for once more conducting a magnificent food drive for us. We appreciate them and their faithfulness in collecting items that we stock each year. A special thank you to Christine P and Stan R for all you did! Second, we are certainly going to fulfill our promise to stock up a communal kitchen for the migrant shelter. We received a grant to do this from the Greater Lowell Community Foundation (thank you Jennifer, Jay, and Maria!), and we will be moving the project from January to February. I haven't forgotten those of you who already said you want to help, and I'll put out another call as we get closer to the time.

Last, thank you all so much for your support, your encouragement, your love, your advice, and everything else you've done this past year to help build up our community in relationships and food. You have kept us going. I would ask that you not buy anymore food donations for us until we resettle. We have a couple of people who can go get us what we need on an emergency basis if we run out of something and it's necessary, and the less we have to transport, the better. The monetary donations that you've made will allow us to restock quickly when we get to our new home, and then I will let you know what items we are low on each week, as I've done since the beginning. If you've already bought things, no worries...we'll take them!

I'm looking forward to another year of serving our neighbors and making them into friends. Continue to light your own candle in the new year and let it shine forth as brightly as you are able! I love you all, more than you can know.