With the arrival of the COVID-19 coronavirus, restaurant options are more limited than ever, older people must seclude themselves for their safety and many living paycheck to paycheck are without work.
In a time of crisis in the Grand Valley, churches are coming together to help the community, and those churches are getting some help themselves.
On Wednesday morning, a semi-truck from Convoy of Hope, a faith-based nonprofit charity organization, arrived at Canyon View Vineyard Church with 20 pallets of food. Later in the day, nine other churches joined CVVC to bag the food for later distribution.
“For Convoy of Hope to deliver here, that’s a pretty big deal, a big effort,” said Jackie Young, a member of CVVC who’s among those spearheading the church’s efforts to deliver food to those in need in the community. “For a semi to come, this is the first time, but we’ve been partnering with Convoy of Hope for a number of years.”
CVVC has been distributing food for the past two weeks. Over that time, they’ve handed out meals for more than 800 homes, with more than 300 deliveries to shut-ins.
More than 400 people have volunteered.
“It’s just volunteers coming to the church, getting a box, putting it in the back of their car full of food, and delivering to homes,” Young said. “Throughout the week, Tuesday through Thursday, we have people coming through the church in drive-by fashion and we load the food into their cars if they were in need.”
With other churches getting in on the compassionate action as well as the Convoy of Hope’s help, those numbers could soon soar.
“We know the food demand is great,” Young said. “We’ve had an amazing show of volunteers just from our church and community, but we know these other churches would love to step up and help. They’re going to do a great job out there as well, and they have contacts we may not have.”
CVVC is directly tied to Convoy of Hope. The church’s senior pastor, Kirk Yamaguchi, has been on the organization’s global board of directors for three years. That connection has proven crucial in the church’s (and its town’s) efforts to combat the coronavirus.
The church also works with Meals on Wheels Mesa County to determine a list of senior citizens to whom food should be delivered.
