Food bank gets singlelargest food donation
Project HOPE Food Bank got an early Christmas present Wednesday morning, receiving the single-largest food donation, 42,000 pounds, in its history from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“I woke up at 2 a.m. still trying to figure out where all the food is going to go,” Ted Thompson, director of the food bank, said, noting he got a call Tuesday from the Hot Springs Ward of the LDS church notifying him that 27 palettes of food would be arriving (Wednesday).
“They asked, ‘Can you take it?’ and I said yeah, you never want to turn down a donation,” he said. “But I had a little angst about where to put it all.”
Thompson said that Jim Smith, president of Keith Smith Co., who donated the warehouse at 915 Gaines
Ave. that houses the food bank, “graciously opened up some new space for the food we got.”
He noted it was Smith’s generosity in originally donating the warehouse “that allows us to be doing what we’re doing. If not for him we wouldn’t be in business.”
Oscar DeVaux, the Elders Quorum president of the church’s Hot Springs Ward, said the food came from the church’s headquarters in Salt Lake City. “The church sends food out all across the country,” he said, noting the local food bank “got on the list and were approved to get a shipment. We just found out it was coming (Tuesday) and thought it was just super.”
DeVaux said the food bank “does a real service for the community. It’s just tremendous.”
Jaime Spencer, president of the Relief Society, the local church’s women’s organization, said the Project HOPE Food Bank was the only organization in Arkansas to get the donation, noting, “It really was just the luck of the draw.”
She said the church was “looking at organizations that needed this type of donation and we have a member, Barbara Morgan, who has volunteered here for quite a while and she made it known to us of their needs here. She was a good liaison.”
“This is certainly a wonderful donation that is really going to help people in Garland County and the surrounding areas to get food,” Thompson said. “We have about 45 agencies that use us on a regular basis and this will be divided between them.”
Some of the agencies he noted that would be getting the supplies include Jackson House, The Salvation Army of Hot Springs and Samaritan Ministries.
“They’ll get it free and then it will go on to them to get it to the people who need it,” he said, noting several of the agencies sent representatives to collect numerous boxes of the food while it was still sitting in the parking lot.
“Once it calms down a little bit, later this afternoon, we’re going to move it into the warehouse and it will be distributed from there,” Thompson said. “We’re just blessed to have the equipment here to take the donation and get it all moved in and put up.”
Annmarie Worthington, public affairs media specialist for the Little Rock Arkansas Stake of the LDS, said the donation was part of the church’s “Light the World initiative every December to bless those around them.”