Old Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard empowers believers

  • Patricia Faulhaber
  • September 15, 2013
  • 570
                        
Summary: Old Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard in Orrville focuses on feeding the hungry with two priorities. First, they are driven to feed the soul and empower those who come for positive change and second, provide food to families in need. Main Article: Often families down on their luck need many physical items to get them back on their feed. Just as often, families also need emotional relief to keep them afloat. Old Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard in Orrville offers both, food for those in need and spiritual fulfillment for those who want support. Administrative director, Timothy Miller, said the pantry’s first priority is to empower those in need through caring, listening, love, and spending quality time with those who come through the doors. “We walk every visitor through the pantry and talk, joke and pray with them if they want us to,” Miller said. “We’re not about the food. We are about communicating God’s love and encouraging people and giving them hope. Everyone gets a printed Bible verse to take with them when they leave. Most everyone who comes in goes for the verse first. Many will ask me what the verse means but most say the verse relates to where they are right at this moment,” he said. Miller said the Ministries of Old Mother Hubbard started a food ministry in 2009 and opened the pantry in April 2013. Miller has contacted 25 churches in Orrville and works with many of them to provide food to their parishioners in need. With the help of the churches, from Oct. 2011 and Oct. 2012, the pantry gave out 177,000 pounds of food. The pantry gets their food from private donations, from businesses donating foods and from a food pantry in PA. Miller said his ministry has truck drivers with CDL B-rated licenses that drive a truck donated to them by a local business back and forth to PA once a month to get food. The truck brings back 13,000 pounds of food each trip including produce, dry goods, canned goods, drinks, meat, dairy and eggs. Miller said his ministry would like to open a second location in Rittman and a third one in Holmes County and work with the churches in those areas. Other ways the ministry is serving those in need is to hold special programs such as the Extreme Couponer to teach others how to stretch food budgets when on food stamps by using coupons. They also host special guest speakers for topics such as A Time for Us Women. And, they have been working to establish a program for planting, caring for and harvesting local gardens. “People who come here for food can work in the gardens. It provides them with a sense of value because the crops from the gardens will go back into the community through the food pantry. We are working on a program called First Fruits Ministry where people or businesses related to a church can donate their first fruits,” Miller said. One example Miller offered is if a farmer usually plants 9 rows of cabbage, the ministry would ask him to put in a 10th row. Volunteers would help maintain and harvest the 10th row. Old Mother Hubbard’s has a website and a Facebook page. Miller said both allow him to hear from people all over the country that know of people in the area that are in need of help. “People will talk to their relatives who live elsewhere about the needs of their family when they may not want to come in to the food pantry. We can then try to reach out to those people and have a conversation with them. There’s no better way to heal a broken heart than talking over a cup of coffee,” Miller said. Those that know of someone in need or those interested in donating food can contact Old Mother Hubbard’s through email, oldmotherhubbardscupboard@yahoo.com or call 330-749-5800. “A local hardware store donated 10 bread pans to us and we’re planning to bake bread. We need items for gardening this spring. We’re also looking for a pressure canner and jars so that we can the garden foods,” Miller said. “We are also looking for volunteers that are mission minded with values of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness and faithfulness. And, we need more licensed truck drivers. The work is incredibility rewarding,” he said.


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