“Perfect!” Jennifer Parker said as her husband, Adam, finished tamping the ground around the post he’d set in the front yard of their Overland Park, Kansas, home. Then the couple stocked their makeshift “take one, leave one” library with books from their own bookshelves.

It was the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and Jennifer hoped her books would help keep neighbors entertained. It worked. Almost immediately, people began coming to her library, borrowing books and leaving others on the front porch so Jennifer could sterilize them before putting them out.

“How can I help?” one neighbor rang her bell to ask, then a second and a third.

But soon, Jennifer had another worry. So many people were losing their jobs. Others were afraid to even go inside a grocery store. “We need to do more,” she told Adam.

Life

How One Woman is Fighting Hunger in Military Communities

Monica Bassett, an Army wife whose family was stationed at Fort Riley in Kansas in 2021, felt choked up when she saw a pleading social media post from a neighbor on the base. The woman was struggling financially, and the need had become so urgent that she was having to go through a neighbor’s trash […]

Jennifer has always kept an extra-full pantry, and after her husband mounted his second structure, she filled it with canned goods and non-perishables. Their generosity was matched by others who left more canned goods, bread, -coffee and other necessities.

Come by anytime—day or night, Jennifer wrote on the Nextdoor app.

Volunteers kept the tiny pantry refilled. They sorted and stowed donations in a donated commercial refrigerator in the Parkers’ garage and in their kitchen and bedrooms.

Soon enough, there was no more room in the Parkers’ home to store the donations. We need a separate space, Jennifer declared in another post on the Nextdoor app. Before she knew it, she received a reply. We have empty rooms at our church you can use, wrote Reverend Laura Phillips of Overland Park Christian Church.

Comfort

Operation BBQ Relief Made It Their Mission To Give Back To Victims And First Responders

After a devastating tornado hit Joplin, Missouri, in 2011, barbecue hobbyist Stan Hays got fellow cooks together to serve meals to victims and first responders. That act of love grew into Operation BBQ Relief, which has served millions of meals

Today, the team of 30 volunteers also receives fresh fruit and veggies from a produce recovery organization, and the Parkers’ now not-so-tiny pantry stays open at the church 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Anyone can shop for a bag of groceries.

“You can get a lot into a single bag—at least 30 pounds,” says Jennifer. In fact, the pantry now measures its success in pounds—giving away 30,000 to 40,000 pounds per month.

“Most days I probably wouldn’t eat if it wasn’t for this place,” says one frequent visitor. I pray God blesses you sevenfold, reads one of the thank you notes Jennifer decoupaged to a bulletin board outside the pantry.

“The notes remind me why we’re doing all this,” she says. “Their ‘thank-yous’ fill my heart with joy.”