Arlene Carpenter

Waterdown, Ont.

It was a recurrence of cancer that caused Arlene Carpenter of Sheridan Park Family Church in Mississauga, Ont., to retire from her 36-year career as a public health nurse in 2011. Coping with a life-threatening illness while working became overwhelming, she says.

“I realized that as much as I loved the job, and as much as I loved the people I was working with, it just wasn’t working for me.”

But she was just 57 and had a sense she had more to do. Her work had involved conducting home visits with high-risk families, providing supportive counselling, health teaching, establishing and then running supper programs for teen moms.

“They needed to be encouraged, loved and supported,” Carpenter says. “When I retired I missed that.”

She harboured thoughts of leading a young moms’ group at her church, but somehow the situation was never right. She researched parish nursing, but that also didn’t feel like a fit.

Then one day, “Out of the clear blue,” she remembers, a church elder asked if she would consider running the church’s small food bank. “I thought, ‘You know, that would be perfect for me.’ ”

It’s been a decade since then, and under her watch the food bank has grown from a small closet in the church basement stocked with canned goods – from which those experiencing homelessness would occasionally be given provisions – to a regular ministry that opens its doors to some 30 families each Tuesday morning, most of them from local, low-income housing or refugees who live in a hotel down the road.

Carpenter is quick to credit a core team of strong volunteers who help with the hands-on work, the decision making and problem solving. Her greatest joys are having the opportunity to pray with some who come, and seeing some clients of the ministry become volunteers or attend Bible studies and Sunday services.

Asked what she has learned about this phase of life, she says, “Listen to the voice of God. I had ideas, but my ideas were not where God called me in the end. But I love it. I love people and so this is perfect. It feeds my soul.”