Do you love to cook? Are you passionate about caring for people with delicious food?
Join the Love Your Neighbor Meal Team! This is a team focused on providing meals to families who have been through a loss, illness, birth of a baby, surgery, or other challenging situation. We walk alongside these families by cooking and bringing yummy food to their door as they walk through a heavy season.
For a number of years, the Love Your Neighbor Bunkbed Team has served families in our community by building bunk beds for foster families, kinship families, and at-risk families who are providing safe places for kids to sleep. This is a ministry that has grown and had so much impact all over Colorado Springs and even in other countries with some of our ministry partners! The beauty of the LYN Bunkbed Ministry is that it offers a unique opportunity for serving to those who may not have found their niche before.
Introducing the Love Your Neighbor Meal Team! This team has the same goal in mind as the bunkbed ministry – to fill an unmet need in the kingdom and offering a new serving opportunity for those who might still be looking for their niche. There is nothing more practical than a meal when a family is walking through a challenging season such as a death in the family, an illness, a surgery, or welcoming a new baby. Our desire is to be a blessing and, quite literally, the hands and feet of Jesus as we meet families in their home with a delicious meal to share. This is an opportunity for the church to demonstrate generosity to individual families who may be unable to “give back” in this season. Jesus was very conscious of people’s physical needs and as his people, we want to meet our community’s physical needs alongside their spiritual needs.
This is a way to wrap around a family in love and support during a time that frequently feels lonely and stressful. We want to walk with families through suffering, challenge, grief, and pain in a way that is extremely tangible. We want these meals to help families will feel like they are not alone in their suffering and hopefully open the door for the Holy Spirit to draw them closer to the Father. This is the gospel. If a family knows that God cares for their bellies, it is so much easier to see how he cares for their lives and their hearts. So come use your gift of cooking to join us!
Those who have lost a loved one, had a new baby, gotten a new foster placement, going through health trials, just had a surgery, etc.
WHERE DO THE REQUESTS COME FROM?
The staff at PRC who see a need
Pulpit Rock church members who know someone with a need
The person who needs the meals
The Love Your Neighbor Meal Request Website Page
You! If you see a need or have a need, please email us at meals@loveyourneighborcs.com so that we can start the process of getting a meal train set up!
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A REQUEST COMES IN?
A team member contacts the family who needs the meals and gathers basic information such as address, number of people in the family, allergies, etc.
A team member creates a meal train using www.mealtrain.com and then emails the link out to the meal team
You pick your preferred dates to bring meals and sign up at the link
WHAT HAPPENS AFTER YOU SIGN UP?
When your meal day arrives, you will text the family contact person and let them know your name and what you plan to bring
You make the meal and drive it to their house!
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE MEAL TRAIN ENDS?
A lead team member will take the final meal in the meal train and check on the family. We will ask if they need any more meals or if their need has been met. We will ask for feedback on how the meal train impacted that family and offer to pray over their family.
Hopefully we will have the opportunity to share the impact of the meals with all of you via email!
HOW LONG DO MEAL TRAINS LAST?
Our hope is that meal trains will last as long as the need exists. It is very important to us that we walk alongside families for the duration of their hard season – we want these families to feel seen in the midst of the heaviness. This is an amazing opportunity to make those on the fringe of our community feel welcomed, seen, loved, and cared for. This is exactly what Jesus did constantly!
We are also very conscientious of making the meal team sustainable. We will not be committing to meal trains that we do not have the capacity for as a team. We don’t want to burn any of you out! With that in mind we will also work to make our commitments a reasonable length of time based on the needs of the family and other needs that have come up.
DOES THIS SOUND LIKE THE OPPORTUNITY YOU HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR?
We are asking those who would like to join the LYN Meal Team to determine whether they can commit to signing up for meals consistently and the number of meals they can prepare and deliver each month – for example, two meals per month is fairly sustainable – and then fill out our volunteer form below. This will place you on the Active Meal Team Member list and you will start receiving emails with meal train links and updates.
There will absolutely be seasons where this may not be possible. If that is you right now or at some point in the future, you can still sign up for the meal team! If you know you will not be able to participate for multiple months, please just let us know via email so that we can update our meal capacity as a team.
The reason this is important is because we don’t want to commit to more meals than we are able to bring. Knowing if we have 10 active Meal Team Members versus 20 or 30 is the difference of 1, 2, or 3 meal trains that we can do at one time. So please consider your ability to commit (both now and ongoing) and keep us updated!
