Lettuce Pray: West Seattle-area churches’ hands-on help for hunger

That’s the back of Jane Taylor‘s car this past Sunday, after the summer’s first collection for Lettuce Pray, which so far has 10 area congregations participating in collection/distribution of nonperishable food and fresh produce. Jane reports, “Between the eight of the ten member churches who had food to collect, we collected 176 pounds of canned goods and 26 pounds of fresh produce. As the summer and the harvest season moves forward, we anticipate that that percentage will shift and we’ll be gathering more fresh produce than canned goods.” Here’s just one of the participating groups – at Grace Church, from left, Jane (who’s coordinating Lettuce Pray area-wide) with Grace’s LP coordinator Ali Kerr and donor Martha Heuschele:

Jane adds, “Our goal for the 12 week collection period is 2000 pounds of fresh produce and an equal amount of canned goods. We are well on our way!!” So far, participants are:

Alki UCC and Congregation Kol HaNeshamah (shared location)
St. John the Baptist Episcopal Church
Tibbetts United Methodist Church
First Lutheran Church of West Seattle
Holy Rosary Parish
Eastside Christian Assembly
Westside Unitarian Universalists
Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish
Grace Church
St. Bernadette’s Parish

Jane says that if you would like to donate produce from your garden, “you can take it to any of (those locations) on Sunday morning and we will pick it up between 10:45 and 12:30 and deliver it into cold storage at the West Seattle Food Bank and White Center Food Bank. If other churches would like to be on the collection list and mobilize their congregations to donate their spare homegrown produce, they can e-mail (me) at janeatay@msn.com.” Jane also added a special thanks “to Kristen Parsons-Rosen for helping with collections and documenting our great day in these photographs” – this last one’s from Our Lady of Guadalupe, as Lisa Keith shared a tomato plant with home gardener Flora Cantos, for future Lettuce Pray collections:

3 Replies to "Lettuce Pray: West Seattle-area churches' hands-on help for hunger"

  • I'mgoinghungry July 7, 2009 (12:56 pm)

    They’ll need a lot more than that to feed the unemployed,homeless and familie’s that have three or more kids who aren’t working becuase of the economy that our government gave us. Our country is a downright disgrace in today’s society. 95% of you don’t give a s*it about unfortunate souls. I see all of you laughing it up and talking crap about the earthen trogladytes that needs to ask for change to survive on the streets. Remember, you all aren’t far away from sleeping in someone’s doorway and eating your next meal in a shelter.

  • casey July 7, 2009 (2:25 pm)

    at least these gracious people are doing something to help! Maybe the food banks do need more than what they are able to provide right now, but without their help, the food bank would have 200 lbs a week less than they do now.

  • Smitty July 7, 2009 (5:30 pm)

    “because of the economy that our government gave us”.

    Classic.

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