Hungry to serve, feed, give? Hungry to make a difference?
Then consider getting involved with the Brown Bag Ministry. This year marks their 20th year operating out of St. Andrew the Apostle Catholic Church in Apex to serve the hungry and homeless in Wake and Durham counties.
In 2005, two friends, Mary Jo (Bukowski) Close and Patricia Hartley, made 50 brown bag lunches in Patricia’s house and delivered them to the homeless in Moore Square in downtown Raleigh. Fast forward 20 years and the Brown Bag Ministry (BBM) now prepares and serves over 14,000 brown bag lunches every month out of five local Wake County churches.
In 2010, Mary Jo moved to New Zealand and in 2012, Patricia co-founded another 501(c)3 organization, The Galilee Project in Wake Forest, so the organization is now run by the devoted and energetic David Legarth. Suburban Living stopped in at St. Andrew’s one busy Saturday morning to learn more from David about this far-reaching and fast-growing ministry.
“We’re 100% voluntary, all of our coordinators, myself…we all serve because we just love the ministry,” David said. Every Saturday, beginning at 9:00 in the morning, volunteers of all ages, faiths and backgrounds come together and pack brown lunch bags with a sandwich, a piece of fruit, something crunchy, and a dessert. Even during Covid, they moved all their tables outside into the courtyard, under the covered walkways. Once they were deemed essential, operations were moved back inside. The homeless and hungry must be fed.
Where do the funds and the food come from?
In addition to relying on volunteers, BBM depends upon donations of all kinds to carry out their mission. “Our largest donations,” David tells us, “may be from here at Saint Andrew’s during the Mass that they have on Thanksgiving Day. Anything that’s donated that day, [the church] will match. Typically, people donate $50 or $100. A business may give $1,000, but we’re definitely not in the ballpark of some of the organizations that have people assigned to seeking out and asking businesses [for donations].”
Over the years BBM has had many sources of food. Take, for instance, bread. Early on, they could ask volunteering families to bring loaves of bread. Then they got too big for that and picked up bread from the Bimbo distributor near the airport, then the Food Bank of Central & Eastern North Carolina, before eventually partnering with Bread of Life at the Ship Outreach and Community Center in Raleigh. Now, BBM picks up over 500 loaves of bread for free every Thursday morning.
David shared a humorous story about obtaining bread during the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The store shelves were cleared out of bread, so that meant there was no day-old bread being returned to the distribution center. We had to go and buy bread from a big box store, and we were buying enough bread for 800 sandwiches, so we got a lot of dirty looks. It just so happened, one of the days, there was a guy unloading bread [for the store] and I said, ‘Is there something we can do? Can we place an order or something?’ He said, ‘Let me see what I can do for you. We’re not really supposed to do this, but I’ll see what we can do’. So, we arranged that we would buy the bread from him at whatever his price was. This went on for probably two or three months during COVID. We always met at a gas station at 6:30 in the morning, in the dark, under one streetlight, and it looked like there was an unsavory deal going on. We would pull up our Brown Bag Ministry truck, and he would open up his door, and we’d start passing racks of bread. Then I’d jump in the back of his truck and write him a check for what we just bought.”
Additional food, fruit, and produce come from local stores like Publix, the Food Bank, and organized food drives. Sadly, a long-time vendor at the State Farmers Market and friend of BBM, Dennis Ennis, passed away in January. Dennis had donated over 1.5 million pieces of fruit to BBM, mostly bananas, over the last 18 years. Which leaves the meat and cheese, lunch bags, sandwich bags, service items (like rubber gloves, stacking bins, utensils), bottles of water, snacks, and other items that are purchased with financial donations.
How does it all come together?
A Saturday morning brown bag packing session starts with “The Talk.” David described how one of his long-time coordinators, Joseph Gaitens, explains the task to be completed — prepare 1,500+ brown bag lunches — to the approximately 56 volunteers gathered at 14 tables of four. “I love his talk. He will say, ‘Think of owning a business. And every week you have new employees. And you don’t know what your sources of ingredients are going to be. And you have to do that every Saturday to make your product. That’s what Brown Bag is.’ Because every Saturday, if you ask how many people are new, maybe 75% will be here for the first time. We pretty much keep our product the same, but rather than pretzels, you may be repackaging Cheez-Its or potato chips. Or instead of animal crackers, somebody may have donated Girl Scout cookies or something else. You never know what’s going to happen, but you get it done. So, ‘The Talk’ is our training talk. We’re going to spend four and a half minutes training, and then we’re going to let you get started.”
Twice a month Brown Bag Ministry prepares, delivers, and serves 250 hot meals in addition to providing brown bag lunches. All of the hot meals are cooked with love by Josephine Lanier who is currently the Outreach Director for the Retired Government Employees Assocation. David told us, “Jo has been our chef since the very beginning. Her background was in nutrition as the certified dietary manager at a couple rehabilitation facilities in the Triangle. She’s Italian, and her family has owned Italian restaurants and pizza shops here in the Triangle and at the beach and in Brooklyn. So, she’s got the best knowledge. One year, we even put together a cookbook based on all her recipes.”
You rarely meet someone like Josephine and when you do, you are better for it, for she radiates pure joy. Josephine has been with Brown Bag Ministry since almost the beginning, and she has cooked more than 70,000 hot meals for the homeless. After welcoming us, she shared that some of the volunteer high school girls wrote their college application essays about her — as someone they admire. She said it brought tears to her eyes, and it did again when she talked about it. She loves all the volunteers. She told us, “God guides my hands. That’s what He does. I feel that the Lord gives us all gifts, whatever they may be, and we need to use them to help our fellow man. A lovely phrase I like to share… ‘We are helping our neighbors in need.’”
The day we visited, Josephine and her kitchen volunteers were preparing hamburgers with lettuce, tomatoes and pickles — packaged on the side, of course, not all wrapped together getting soggy. And at the large professional kitchen stove, Josephine was making baked beans. But not just ordinary baked beans…her signature homemade recipe. She explained, “I am browning peppers and onions, and then I’m going to make my barbecue bean sauce, where I put in brown sugar, ketchup, mustard and spices. And this will [be added to] a plain can of baked beans and make it homemade. This is what we do at Brown Bag. We definitely try to take it up another level, because everybody deserves a home-cooked meal. And this is what I do. I love it. I’ve been doing it for 18 years, and it just makes me who I am.”
(And then she gave us homemade brownies fresh from the oven!)
Where do all these meals go?
In the beginning, the brown bag lunches were delivered to Moore Square in downtown Raleigh. When passing out food at Moore Square was banned, they moved to the North Carolina Freedom Park across the street from the NC Legislative Building for a couple years. Then they went to Oak City Outreach Center, right behind the old Salvation Army building at Moore Square, and eventually Oak City Cares opened. Around noon, once the lunches are packed and Josephine’s hot food is ready to eat, volunteers will load the Brown Bag Ministry truck and head to Oak City Cares where they will serve the hungry.
Brown Bag Ministry is also a pick-up point for several other organizations as well. Missionwork 4 Jesus and a group affiliated with Church in the Woods request brown bag lunches to pick up and hand out in downtown Raleigh. Another group BBM works with, Life International RTP, delivers food to a couple of different senior apartments in Durham. And more than 300 lunches are supplied regularly to the men’s shelter on South Wilmington Street. For the past four winters, BBM has also been the provider of bag meals for declared White Flag events in Raleigh.
More than bag lunches
David has coordinators that lead Brown Bag Ministry efforts at churches and other sites around Wake County, and everyone involved is part of a network of compassionate volunteers always looking for places to feed the homeless, and people who are in need. In need of boots for a job starting Monday. In need of a hotel room on a cold night when the shelters are full. In need of transportation for a family whose car has broken down.
At Brown Bag Ministry, there are no administrative layers, no hoops to jump through. If one of David’s coordinators sees a need, they call or email him. With every single dollar donated going right back to those in need, and because the ministry is so streamlined, he always finds a way to help.
He shared an example of one BBM friend, Johanna Calubaquib, who does safety checks all around Raleigh. “She’ll find an elderly woman in a wheelchair, and it’s 32 degrees outside, and she’s underneath an overhang or behind a business or something. And she’ll call me and say, ‘I found this lady. We can’t get her into one of the emergency shelters until next week. Can we do a hotel?’ And I’m thinking, ‘I would pay for that myself.’ Absolutely, let’s go ahead and do that!”
Another call David remembered came on a Thursday. “’I have a family of six who need a little help with a hotel. Somebody’s pregnant and somebody lost a job, but they’re both starting a job on Monday. Is there any way you guys can help out for a week?’ Yeah, we can cover for one week. We worked it out for them to have one week at a hotel in Raleigh. Yes, they are going to have a job starting on Monday, but they don’t have a place to sleep tonight.”
Perhaps David’s most touching story was this one: “A while ago, we had a family whose car broke down on their way from Georgia. They were going to Indiana, their car broke down on the Beltline, and it was going to be a couple thousand dollars to repair. They contacted Church in the Woods. We went and … this car is dead. It was husband, wife, and four kids. Brown Bag Ministry put them up in a hotel for three days and bought them Amtrak tickets, and they made their way to Indiana that way.”
“Every now and then I’ll get a donation for, like, $10 and I think it’s them. I don’t think their situation improved all that much, except they were living with relatives in Indiana. But every now and then, I would get a note: ‘Hi, David, how are you doing? This is so and so. Do you remember us? Our kids are grown. Here’s $2’. My gosh, little stuff like that is incredible.”
What do you like most about volunteering?
The St. Andrew’s church fellowship hall was teeming with volunteers this Saturday morning, so we wandered and observed and tried to stay out of the way of this well-orchestrated assembly line. But we did ask several folks what brought them to BBM.
Rhima Rolle, a 16-year-old from Athens Drive High School and a member of the National Charity League, told us, “I enjoy making all the meals for all the guests. I’ve also done the serving downtown. And it’s really amazing seeing their faces.”
Guests…
Next, we talked to a truly seasoned volunteer. At almost 10 years old, Vienna Toterhi, a student at St. Michael’s, has been helping at Brown Bag Ministry since she was about a year old. Her mother, Melissa, told us that Vienna had “earned her t-shirt” doing everything from taking out the trash, to helping load and unload the truck, to making sandwiches. She was very proud of her daughter; they made such a happy mother-daughter team.
Emil Karimpil from Cary High School, Emmanuel Joseph from Holly Springs High School, and Ryan Mozart from Apex High School — all friends from church — were making sandwiches. This was Emil’s third time volunteering with BBM. When we asked the boys what they enjoyed about being there, rather early for teenagers on a Saturday morning, Emmanual said, “It’s just the fact that we’re feeding these poor kids. We’re actually being productive because—,” at which point Ryan finished his friend’s thought, “People are sleeping right now, and we’re doing something better.”
Hungry to help? Brown Bag Ministry makes it easy!
Monetary donations are always appreciated and needed throughout the year. All donations are used to buy the things that make the ministry work, and it’s more than food. It’s packaging, gas and maintenance for the trucks, and so many other details. “We don’t solicit funds,” David said, “They come when they come, and we use them the way we need to.”
If you wish to volunteer or make a financial donation, visit the BBM website (https://brownbagministry.org/) and follow them on Facebook. Donations can also be made by scanning the QR code.
