“This is our 10th year to have a food fight in Fairhope for Ecumenical Ministries and I bring the angel out every year. Ecumenical does so much for our community and October is the month the shelves are empty and people haven’t gotten into the giving spirit yet. We fill in the gap. You call a food fight in school and everyone comes. That is how it started. This year we got toiletries and soaps because people can’t get them with food stamps. I have worked with Ecumenical for 30 years as a volunteer. They transition people from getting help to getting on their feet and then coming back and giving help.
I have had In the Company of Angels for 30 years. When my mother passed away I was lost and numb. I had taught school for 22 years. My husband asked me what I wanted to do and I told him I wanted a little shop of happies because Mama always bought us happies. I took a leave of absence from teaching and never went back. As long as people come in, I will keep finding happies for them. Sometimes people come in and say they don’t want to buy anything, they have had a bad day and just want to walk around and listen to the music.
A lady was going to take a gift to a friend who was dying that day and had a dream to come to the store. She was spinning around and wound so tight. I told her there is nothing you can buy for someone on their death bed. Sometimes you take a gift and sometimes you are the gift. If she had gone as wound up as she was, she would have scared her friend to death in the few hours she had left.
I have a husband who told me from the beginning that he didn’t care if the store costs us a bunch of money, but he hoped it didn’t. It hasn’t, but it helps that I sleep with my banker just in case. Each year I worry that people won’t participate in the food fight and he tells me I can go to Winn Dixie and buy what Ecumenical needs, put it in the truck and don’t tell anyone. I don’t know why I worry about this because God always provides. Every October 31, the truck is filled up with food and we stock the shelves one more time.”
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