We have often written about the food bank but in these last two or three months it seems to growing at an amazing rate. In March the social services department phoned to say they were sending a family of nine to sign-up. The father of the family duly came and was very pleased to receive a share of food.
Yesterday, when he came along to register for the next distribution, he brought with him four other people who live in the same flats and they all registered their families. They spoke very little French, so communication was difficult. Whilst we were struggling to communicate another lady arrived, realised the problem and started speaking to them in Russian and interpreting for us.
It seemed that all the men were from Bulgaria and our interpreter was from Chechnya. She said it wasn’t Bulgarian they were speaking between themselves, so we wondered if they are Roma families.
Isn’t it amazing that such people find their way to our church door? It was the first time the Chechnyan lady had come and she’d also been sent by social services.
They hadn’t given her the complete address, so she’d spent over an hour wandering round trying to find us and was so appreciative of the possibility of help.
Obviously with increasing numbers we have been concerned about having sufficient food to go round. A few weeks ago, a lady from the food bank organisation phoned and asked if she could come and meet us.
She asked if the quantity of food we had was sufficient and was happy to increase it – which we gladly accepted. Last month we gave out 40 bags, covering about 150 people, so hopefully we’ll be able to make it go further now.
We really appreciate our church and seeing people come in and out for help during the week. Whilst we were still there yesterday, a family of four from Moldova appeared. We don’t know how they found us but they needed some temporary help and we were able to give them a bag of non-perishable food.