While resources have been in short supply due to the pandemic, this hasn’t stopped volunteers at St. Columban from assisting those in need in Garden Grove. As Sister Brid O’Shea explains, “We are still assisting the homeless here…albeit to a lesser extent, but more creatively.”
No longer able to cook meals
in the church kitchen, resourceful volunteers are preparing breakfast and lunch for the hungry from their own kitchens and delivering them several times a week to nearby parks and places where the homeless congregate.
Sr. Brid, herself, is purchasing gift cards (admittedly, she says, with help from younger folks), and doling them out as needed for recipients to use for food, medicine and gas for their cars.
Parishioners Burgie and Judy Burgraff, who volunteer on a monthly basis in the program, are now doing so three times a week. They provide a hot meal from some of the items from the food pantry and, according to Sr. Brid, are doing a phenomenal job in cooking a very tasty meal for their clients. Using plastic bags donated by another parishioner, volunteers arrive to collect the meals, plasticware and coffee, and they’re off to deliver. Some 40-55 people are served a couple of times per week. On Sundays, about 30 people receiving assistance.