Loaves and Fish is a local cooking and serving ministry, feeding poor members of the community every Saturday evening at Trinity Episcopal Church in Ossining, NY.  Seven area churches have worked together since 1993 in this effort to nourish and care for our community members as Christ cared for the multitudes; New Hope Fellowship has been a partner in L&F for over five years.

Serving dates in 2007:  Saturday, June 9th; Saturday, August 4th; Saturday, September 22nd.

For more information, please visit the Loaves and Fish website.

Below, please enjoy a description of an evening spent at Loaves and Fish, written by Christine An in 2000.

*** 

At 5 o’clock on September 11, as on any other Saturday, the dining hall of Ossining United Methodist Church begins to fill with the "guests " of Loaves and Fish, an outreach meal program for underprivileged area residents.

Among many coming for their only hot meal of the week is soft-spoken Garcia Mable who accompanies his gray-haired father, Sam Garcia. The two take their seats at a table with their friends who also attend the Loaves and Fish dinners regularly. During the week, Garcia Mable usually gets his food from a food pantry in Ossining, which he takes home and shares with his father.

"The food pantry is closed on Saturdays and Sundays, so we come here to eat," says Mable. Interjecting his conversation with brief Spanish translations to his father, Mable relates that they are originally from Ecuador, and his mother passed away two months ago.

The Mables’ need to attend these Saturday dinners of Loaves and Fish is typical among those participating. While conducting research in preparation for an outreach program in the area approximately seven years ago, Holy Name of Mary parish in Croton-on-Hudson assessed that although there were several food programs available during the weekdays, none was offered on weekends.

Thus, Loaves and Fish was launched to fill that void. Organized by Holy Name of Mary, the program operates with the goal of reaching out to poor and underprivileged people in the community in an effort to alleviate hardships in their lives. Ossining United Methodist Church joined in the effort by providing dining and kitchen space on most Saturdays; the Trinity Episcopal Church of Ossining is also used as an alternate facility.

According to Sue Ellen Maher, founding director of Loaves and Fish, its first dinner was served in January of 1994 to just two guests. Since then, the meals have been served every Saturday, sometimes to as many as 100 people in a single evening.  "We do not screen the guests in any way, because we feel that if they are coming to the program, they are coming because of need for food," Maher explained.  Maher surmised that most guests are not homeless but generally could be categorized as having alcohol-related problems or recent immigrants, handicapped and unable to work, working poor with young children and some elderly in need of companionship. "Almost everyone walks to the church, even in the dead of winter," Maher has observed.

A 15-minute walk in the rain brought Alex Hailu to the dinner. Sitting next to the younger Mable, Hailu laments, "It’s hard to find a job without a car."  Across the table, Bruce Sawyer adds to the dinner dialogue, "I come out of hunger. The food is tremendous. There are many nice guys here, and I come to talk to my friends."

For similar reasons cited by Sawyer, an average of 40 people attend the dinner each Saturday, and the number increases during the winter months to 60 – 70 per week. Fran Gennarelli, the program’s master chef who coordinates six cooking teams that volunteer on a rotational basis, hopes to expand the program by recruiting additional cooking teams and reaching out to more people.

The Loaves and Fish outreach is financed by Holy Name of Mary through sales of food vouchers from local supermarkets and with government grants that allow purchase of food from a government-funded food warehouse. Several local merchants contribute by donating various grocery items and flowers.

Under the leadership of Gennarelli and Kathleen Daudier, the current director of Loaves and Fish, some 100 volunteers, mostly from Holy Name of Mary, are involved in the program. Among them are five regular serving teams that oversee and serve the guests. Rosemary Nass, a member of a serving team, notes, "This is a program where many people could be involved on different levels."  Among such volunteers are parish members who participate by baking homemade desserts. Several local church groups have served as cooking and serving teams. Girl Scout troops have provided handmade table centerpieces and presented the guests with candy bags.

Occasionally, live musical presentations entertain the guests. During holiday seasons when there was a potential for a volunteer shortage, Loaves and Fish sometimes operated with assistance from people who expressly offered to serve during such times.

New Hope Fellowship (NHF), an evangelical church in Sleepy Hollow, recently committed to serve as one of the regular cooking teams. Ho Soo Lee, a member of NHF and a research scientist at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown, explained his decision to cook for Loaves and Fish. "I wanted to serve my neighbors, because that is the beginning of the Christian mission. I also wanted to learn how to serve others."

It is 5:15 p.m. Mary Lally, a serving team member, leads the guests in a prayer. Guests are seated at tables decorated with flowers from Croton Florist. Dinner plates are brimming with a warm dinner of ham and gray, mashed potatoes and corn, all prepared by volunteers from NHF. Members of Holy Name of Mary serving team, including several children, politely ask the guests if they would like their cups refilled. In the kitchen, trays are lined with plates of donated cakes, ready as the next course.

The evening is proceeding smoothly under the direction of Maureen Cooney, heading the "second Saturday" serving team. "It is our calling to help make people’s situations better. It is so little [compared to] how much you get from everyone else in your life," comments Cooney, instilling such values in her son Patrick. [The fourth-grader at Saint Augustin’s School in Ossining has been serving alongside his mother since the age of four.]  The "little" efforts from various individuals in the community make a difference in the life of Hailu who responds in appreciation, "The way they serve you here, they make you feel like part of their family."

As the tables are cleared, volunteers pack remaining portions of dinner and food donations for the guest to take home. Carrying a plastic bag filled with an extra plate of the ham dinner and a loaf of bread, Mable shyly asks for some flowers that he would like to place at his church in memory of his mother. A few minutes later, with his bag now topped with yellow mums, Mable escorts his father to the door. Grinning, he bids farewell, "In Ecuador, we say ‘Gracias’."

By H. Christine An
(as published in North County News, September 20-26,2000)