We thought you might like to read the following article describing our progress from 2016 through 2023. It was written by the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod's Southeastern District and published July 30, 2024 on its website.

In 2016 St. John's Lutheran, a congregation of 100 people located in Farmville, Va., decided to provide meals to the community during Thanksgiving. Marion Kyner, a St. John’s congregant, recalls the day the idea was proposed.

“I remember being in the narthex and Pastor [Matthew Sorenson] and Marge Bailey talking about it,” Kyner said. “Pastor said he’d like to feed 500 people Thanksgiving dinner and we’ll deliver it. Marge said ‘Pastor, look at our numbers. We can’t feed 500 people!’ And Pastor said, ‘No we can’t, but God can.’”

Fast forward to last Thanksgiving, and St. John’s was way off that target number. Oh, the ministry hit the target of 500 meals for residents in the surrounding area that first year, and every year since, but last year St. John’s and its dozens of partners – churches, businesses and other organizations – prepared and delivered 1,000 meals. This month Kyner and the leadership team will begin making preparations for the ninth year of this ministry and another 1,000 meals.

The official name of the initiative is “Feeding Farmville.” Pastor Sorenson said not using the St. John’s name was intentional, as he wants “all churches to feel like they can participate.”  Four hundred people from across the community volunteer to help prepare and deliver the meals. St. John’s only has a warming kitchen, which means all of the food that needs to be cooked has to be prepared offsite. A local restaurant cooks all the turkeys. The rest of the meal consists of mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, cranberries, rolls, yams, and pumpkin pie.

It’s a meal that the recipients likely appreciate on Thanksgiving and could use other days of the year. The poverty rate in the county, Prince Edward County, is currently estimated to be about 20%, double the rate for the state.

More than a quarter of the 400 volunteers are involved in delivering the meals. There are 50 delivery teams consisting of at least two people apiece, and by design most teams have no more than five stops. Sorenson said, “We want them to be able to spend time with people, not just throw the meal at them and go.”

Kyner said one of the things that they’ve learned is “we can’t outdo God.”

“Every year we start out with ‘x’ amount of money in the bank account,” she said. “After we deliver all the meals, our bank account is more than what it was when we started. We don’t need all of that to be sitting there, so we decided to feed Farmville at Easter.”

For the past two Easters they have provided 250 meals each year.

Marge Bailey, that congregant who wondered whether 500 people could be fed, got to participate in the first couple of “Feeding Farmville” days before she passed away. Kyner spoke about Marge’s strong faith in the Lord and is sure Marge would have been pleased to see the ministry reach twice that mark. Kyner hopes that other congregations will attempt to do something akin to “Feeding Farmville” in their communities.

“The best honor is to see someone take this up and do it for themselves,” she said. “For people to experience our great God. Just like the Feeding of the 5,000, I think the disciples got to see what God did through them. We hope others see what God can do through us. That is priceless.”