Hundreds of families came out Saturday to the parking lot of God’s Glorious Praise Ministries on Sierra Highway in Canyon Country for groceries. According to the church’s pastor Christopher Ethakpemhi, a Canyon Country resident, the church has been hosting these food drives every Saturday for 36 weeks.
Those who came to the drive didn’t just get canned food, drinks and other dried goods. Ethakpemhi, who also owns Venice Pizzeria next door, offers frozen chicken, vegetables and fruit, which he keeps frozen or refrigerated in the restaurant and gives to families in need.
“We want to extend a hand of fellowship to everyone,” Ethakpemhi said Saturday morning during the drive. “We want to encourage people, because people need it.”
According to Ethakpemhi, most of the food they give comes from the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank. On average, a family of four will receive about two bags of groceries, which typically totals about $50 in value.
Ethakpemhi said that what they give to people is determined by the size of the group and whether they have kids, in which case, those folks get milk, a priority for those families.
According to Barry Nelson, who’s a deacon at the church and the one who orders the groceries, the amount of goods the church receives from the food bank is based on the number of people the drive attracts from week to week. The church keeps a log of the families that come by for groceries.
“Because of how we’ve demonstrated how many people we can give it to,” Nelson said, “we’ve been given more.”
Other community members donate food as well. On Saturday, the church received bread from Panera Bread in Valencia.
Those helping serve the public during the drive included a mixture of church members and people from the community. They all seemed very busy sorting the goods and distributing them.
The line of families who had come for food had wrapped around the building and went all the way to the back. The adjacent parking lot was opened for those coming for food to park — the little lot that serves the church, the pizzeria and the other few businesses there was certainly not enough.
Alma Nelson, Barry Nelson’s wife and the coordinator of the food drive, said she feels fortunate to be serving others, particularly at a time when groceries are so expensive. She shared a particular story she experienced about three months ago, when a woman who happened to be driving by stopped at the food drive and became so grateful when she found zucchini there.
“The lady,” Nelson’s wife said, “went to Vallarta, and she told me she couldn’t afford to buy zucchini. She didn’t buy it. Then she was driving by here, saw what we were doing, she comes in, and she says, ‘Oh my God, you guys have zucchini here. Do you know that I had to forego the zucchini at the store? But God provided it here.’”
Ethakpemhi said the food drive typically goes from 10 a.m. to 2 or 3 p.m. He expected it to be busy the whole time.
