🍴The Journey of Our Food

Dear Street Life Ministries Community,
As we step into November, we want to express our gratitude for your continued support and involvement in our mission. The chilly weather and rainy days have arrived in the Bay Area, making it even more crucial to extend a helping hand to our homeless friends.

1. The Journey of Our Food from Donation to a Hot Nutritious Meal

Getting the Food

In 2023, we received a total of 54,920 pounds of food donations to help feed those in need. A significant portion of these donations comes from the Peninsula Food Runners nonprofit, an organization dedicated to collecting high quality unused food from various sources, including restaurants, events, and corporate cafeterias. Peninsula Food Runners provides a crucial link

between organizations and our ministry, allowing us to acquire ingredients and meals of excellent variety and quality. We pride ourselves on repurposing these donations into hot nutritious meals for those we serve.

We also receive generous food donations from various groups that we partner with, including Redwood Church, Sacred Heart, Trinity Presbyterian, Rise City Church, Templo La Luz, Central Peninsula Church, Canaan Church, Abundant Life, Grace Church, Palo Alto First Christian Church, and KeKe Lepulu, along with Jeff Sampson, contribute by providing entire meals one day a month. We also purchase new food items, such as cocoa mix, peanut butter, and fresh vegetables, to complement the donations.

Storing the Food

For many years we have been partnering with Peninsula Covenant Church who has generously allowed us to utilize space in their top of the line kitchen facility to store our food and supplies. We have access to refrigerators, freezers, ample storage and all the cooking equipment they have and as you can imagine we are very grateful for this partnership.

Preparing the Food

So what does it take to manage 54,920 pounds of food and coordinate meals five nights a week? In the past, we relied on the dedication of our amazing volunteers to ensure our loved ones on the streets received well-prepared, nutritious meals. However, as our number of clients and partners began to increase and our operation grew in scope, we could no longer handle the number of meals required solely with volunteers. A firm, guiding hand on the tiller was needed, so we hired Jeff Ronan as our new Street Life Ministries Kitchen Manager. Our kitchen manager position is perhaps the most important role in our feeding mission.

Jeff has a crucial role in receiving donations, preparing the menu, the meals and getting the kitchen ready every night for our committed volunteers, our accent cooks. The accent cooks arrive at the kitchen and heat all the delicious food that Jeff prepared and they get it ready for our Street Life Food Van Drivers.

Delivering the Food

Our Street Life Drivers are another crucial part of our nightly meal service once the food is prepped and heated, our dedicated van drivers transport it to our street locations, and our team of volunteers ensures that it’s served with care and compassion. They deliver more than a hot nutritious meal but those we serve have come to joyfully expect smiling faces and wholesome conversations to go along with those meals.

Serving the Food

At Street Life Ministries, a Table Captain plays a star role in our nightly mission. Once the food delivery driver arrives at our street location, they connect with the Table Captain, who takes charge of supervising the servers for the evening. The Table Captain oversees the efficient unloading of food from the van and ensures it’s laid out properly for distribution. They also provide guidance to a team of up to 12 servers, who are typically volunteers for the night, many of them being first-time participants in our service. Under the watchful eye of the Captain, additional trays of food are pulled from insulated storage within the van. In the course of a year, we rely on the support of approximately 2,900 dedicated servers who contribute their time to help those in need on the streets of the San Francisco Bay Area Peninsula.

Then and Now

When Street Life started we served meals once a week and now, thanks to you and all our ministry supporters and dedicated volunteers we have expanded the hot nutritious meals we provide to six nights a week and one Sunday breakfast once a month. It is truly to incredible to see how many people have come together with the shared goal of making a difference in the lives of those who need it most.

Jeff has been married for 28 years, and his wife serves as the Pastor of Family Ministries at Peninsula Covenant Church. They have a daughter who has been a dedicated volunteer at Street Life for many years. Throughout his career, Jeff has been involved in the Food and Beverage industry, both working and sharing his knowledge in this field. He holds a PHD in Hotel and Tourism Management, making his expertise a valuable addition to our team. Jeff and his wife have been residing in the Bay Area for 5 years, following a move from Asia where they lived for 25 years.

Your Support is Needed

In order to bring Jeff on our team full time we partnered with San Mateo County and their 4R program to receive a grant which helped fund our crucial Kitchen Manager for about a year. However, we now face a challenge as the grant has been depleted, and the program is no longer offered. To continue providing the same level of care and support to our community, we are reaching out to you, our valued supporters, for assistance. We kindly ask for your help through donations, as your generosity will enable us to sustain our mission of offering nourishing meals to those in need. Your support and donations, along with the generous deliveries of high quality food from our partners allow us to continue our mission of feeding those in need. Without our selfless volunteers, none of this food would make it to our homeless community. It is when we come together as a community that we can make effective change.

2. Upcoming Live Podcast with authors Vicky Lanzone and Jamie Blaine

We are thrilled to announce that our very own Vicky Lanzone and her co-author Jamie Blaine will be the guests in the upcoming second episode of our live podcast on November 16th, hosted by Pastor David. The episode will focus on the writing of their book Life is Crazy and We’re All Going to Die – A Book about Hope in Strange Places and the inspiring stories within it. Don’t miss this opportunity to tune in and gain valuable insights into our work and the remarkable people who make it possible.

We will be live on Facebook on November 16th at 6:30PM.

Tune In

A Thanksgiving story from Jamie

Thanks

Sometimes I think, if the world was created to be broken, is there really a purpose here? Why even try?

It was the day before Thanksgiving and I took my mom to the upscale home decor place right off 65 South. A Motel 6 sits next door and there was a little black and white service dog standing where the parking lots meet. It was staring at us, anxious and pleading, looking our way and then back at the motel.

“What’s wrong with that dog?” Mama said. “It’s looking at us funny.”

“I dunno,” I replied. “Maybe we’d better go see.”

We rounded the corner. The dog scurried over to a grey-haired man leaning on a wheelchair and struggling to load a beat-up suitcase into the cargo carrier strapped to the top of a white Kia SUV. “Pretty dog,” I said as we walked over. “Shepherd?”

“Border Collie,” the man replied. “Name’s Jasmine.”

“Hello, Jasmine. Welcome to Nashville,” I said, noticing West Virginia plates. “Okay if I help your boss with his suitcase?”

Anytime I approach a stranger, I try to be as polite and nonthreatening as possible just in case. Mama was already arranging things in the carrier though, so I grabbed the handle and heaved it into place.

“I tell you, I sure appreciate it,” the man said. “I was just wondering how I was gonna get all this stuff loaded.”

His back seat was packed to capacity and over at the curb there was a pile. Plastic grocery sacks full of clothes, boxes of Little Debbie cakes and packets of instant rice. Five-pound bag of Gravy Train. A boombox CD player with the cord wrapped around it. Another suitcase with brown duct tape around the sides.

“No problem,” I told him, grabbing the second suitcase and tucking the dog food under my arm. “Y’all in Nashville for Thanksgiving or just to see the sights?”

“Well, Jasmine’s best friend passed away last month, so we are just sort of taking this little trip across the country. Figured we’d pass through Tennessee.”

I wasn’t sure what he meant so I nodded and looked confused until he filled in the rest. “Jasmine’s best friend was my best friend too. She was my wife.” He pointed to the car. “Watch that first latch up there. The straps get caught.” He didn’t say it for pity, just matter of fact. Somehow, that made it even heavier.

We packed the last of his things. I leaned all my weight on the carrier and got the latches secured. Then the four of us were standing there and I wasn’t quite sure what to do or say next.

I could tell you it felt good to help someone in need, but that wouldn’t be the whole truth. In another way it felt terrible too, that God created this kind of world, so long and so short and so sad and so beautiful sometimes. I don’t want to feel most grateful when faced with someone else’s pain. I don’t want to have to celebrate that we’ve dodged life’s worst.

But I guess that’s the truth of Thanksgiving. Sometimes that’s what it takes.

“I don’t know what we’d have done if you folks hadn’t come along,” the man said as we shook hands. “I always heard Nashville was a good-hearted town.”

“Well,” I replied. “We try.”