Food, faith and fun

Michele Marr

It started with a prayer.

In January of 1999, Suzanne Lemonnier-Smith, her husband Rick

Smith and their two young children were living in a small mobile home

in Huntington Beach. Rick was a student and the family’s sole

provider. It wasn’t easy each month to stretch his income to make

ends meet.

“The Holy Spirit put it on my heart to pray for a freezer,” said

Lemonnier-Smith, “and I thought, ‘Why in the world should I pray for

a freezer?’ Our cupboards were a bit bare.”

But pray she did.

Six months later she had a freezer -- in her living room. It was

the only place the huge upright appliance would fit in their mobile

home, which had no garage.

The freezer, it turned out, was the start of the food ministry at

Fountain Spring Church in Huntington Beach, where Lemonnier-Smith and

her family worshipped.

“You know in the Bible it says, ‘my cup runneth over.’ Well our

freezer, refrigerator and coolers were running over,” she said.

Her sister got a job with a food company taking food with expired

dates off grocery store shelves. Every night by 11 p.m. she would have loads of dairy and meat products that filled the freezer and

then some.

Meanwhile Smith met the director of a food ministry warehouse that

collected and distributed package-damaged, hard-to-sell but usable

non-perishables and sundries. He offered them all banana-box loads of

the staples they could use.

Now, on every Wednesday, every other Saturday and many of the days

in between, a couple of handfuls of women and children from Fountain

Spring Church deliver nearly a ton of food each week, mostly to

families with children who are, according to Suzanne, “within our

reach and juggling utility bills, car payments, medical bills and

rent” on an income that just doesn’t quite cover them all.

Where they get the food and where they deliver it changes as

circumstances change. But their commitment to the ministry remains.

When God closes one door he opens another one, according to

Lemonnier-Smith.

They take the groceries to a 160-unit apartment complex, an

80-room motel, a transitional home for battered women and their

children and anywhere else they find a need they can help fill.

“We do a lot of stuff disproportionate to our size,” the church’s

pastor Bill Crouch said. “This is a lot more than giving food. It’s

giving hope. It’s giving love.”

The women who volunteer their time to the ministry say it’s a way

of life.

“We rejuvenate our spirits by exercising our hearts in love,”

explained Lemonnier-Smith who spends 25 hours a week in the effort.

Her children, 7-year-old Savannah and 4-year-old Madison often make

deliveries with her.

Kathy Bogdan, a working mother of two children, figures she spends

an average of 36 hours a week picking up, packing and delivering

food. Her children, Amanda, 7, and Robert, 4, and her mother Margie

Selstad often work with her.

“We are doing what we think God would want us to do,” Bogdan said.

They do a lot more than throw food at a problem. They make their

rounds with cars full of food and hearts full of tender loving care.

Their sense of fun is contagious. They take clothes, furniture,

diapers and, said Bogdan, “whatever God provides.”

They take time. They spread out blankets and crafts for the

children to make. Bogdan, who was once a manicurist, paints the

fingernails and toenails of women and children and has taught some of

the other women and children how to do it. They paint flowers in

summer, Christmas trees and snowmen at Christmas, flags for the

Fourth of July. They take Bogdan’s pet snake Butterscotch Suzie for

show and tell. They share cupcakes and cookies.

They talk. They encourage. They comfort. They pray. They get love

back.

“People give us cold sodas, tacos, flowers. The kids make us

pictures, cards, hats and crowns,” Bogdan said.

They have come to feel like family.

“A lot of people come to the church through the food ministry,”

Bogdan said. Even more would come, she said, if they only had

transportation. One of the ministry’s women, Debbie Knox, ferries as

many people as she can. The church is praying for a bus or van.

“When the Lord places a prayer on your heart, ridiculous as it may

seem, pray and have faith he will answer your prayers,”

Lemonnier-Smith said. “He uses ordinary people to deliver his

extraordinary love and blessings. We are only his messengers. It’s an

honor.”

* MICHELE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach. She

can be reached at michele@soulfoodfiles.com.