The day began like any typical school day with staff worship — only it wasn’t typical because of distance learning. During the staff Zoom call, the teachers talked through the different needs of school families. Often those needs centered around not enough income. Families struggled to pay their bills and needed help with groceries.
Lewis County Adventist School in Chehalis, Washington, has partnered with a nonprofit organization, World Vision, for the past three years and had received an email asking if the school had refrigerator capacity. The school doesn't typically get food from World Vision, but the staff started praying for a possibility to distribute food to school families.
A few days later, while compiling a resource list of local organizations that school families could benefit from, LCAS representatives connected with a man from God’s Portions, a local nonprofit food distribution program. He had lots of bread and some other things the school could collect and distribute.
A few staff members went to the warehouse and packed up hundreds of loaves of bread and other dry goods along with some fresh veggies and yogurt.
LCAS staff quickly sent out an email to school families and the next morning, they distributed food boxes to 35 families.
The following week LCAS picked up 75 sets of boxes of produce and dairy along with much more bread and fresh veggies. The school’s industrial fridge had gone out that morning, so the team was uncertain what to do with any extra boxes.
These items went to 75 families within two hours. When the last car came in, LCAS volunteers gave them the last box of food. God had provided just enough for the need of the day.
On the second night of food distribution, a prospective parent — someone the school staff didn’t know — drove in and requested more information about the school. She said she had heard such good things about the school, and she wanted her son to attend next year.
On May 27, 2020, LCAS handed out 334 boxes of food in several neighborhoods where students live.
While things were still uncertain about what the future would look like for the school year in the fall, God provided an opportunity for Lewis County Adventist School to meet some basic needs of the local community. Marketing isn’t always an ad in the paper, but sometimes comes through the little interactions shared daily that make a difference in someone’s life.
