La Banque Alimentaire, or the Brussels Food Bank, is a charitable organisation, which helps those who are in need. It is part of the Belgian and European Federations of Food Banks and receives food from supermarkets, bakeries and other producers and suppliers, and passes this on to other groups around the city to distribute.
Brussels Baptist Church, which my husband Philip and I lead, has recently become one of its distribution centres. Once a month, the food is collected from a central depot and taken to the church, where it has to be shared out as fairly as possible amongst the participating families and individuals.
Our quota is 30 units, which includes people living alone to families of six or seven. Currently about half the people are from outside the church and came along in response to a publicity leaflet drop around the neighbourhood.
In the last distribution at the end of March, 105 people were helped in total. The recipients come from a number of different home countries – currently Angola, Brazil, D R Congo, Cuba, Haiti, Romania and Rwanda, as well as Belgium.
Some are older people living alone and finding it ever harder to make ends meet, whilst others are unemployed or haven’t yet got their ‘papers’. We’re gradually getting to know a little more of their needs.
The type of food varies enormously, as does the quantity available, so care needs to be taken that everyone gets appropriate things.
There are always meat products but these need to be checked in order to avoid for example giving pork-based products to a Muslim family.
There is always frozen and chilled food, so we needed to acquire a freezer – a friend just ‘happened’ to offer us one a few days before our first distribution!
Deepening relationshipsTwo people have already asked for Bibles – one in French and one in Swahili (which of course we ‘happened’ to have!). Another lady who lives a few doors up the road asked, “Is there a church through there? Can anyone come?”
She hasn’t been to a service yet but we now greet her when we see her in the street and spend time talking to her and her two friends on distribution days.
Obviously, the aim of the church is not only to offer practical help to people in the neighbourhood but also to use this project as a tool for outreach.
Many of our church members are from church backgrounds where evangelism means either ‘door-to-door’ inviting people to an occasional big event, or a major campaign.
This encourages them to come along and help with the Food Bank, where we hope they’ll learn more about the effect of friendship and practical help.
We also gave each person an Easter card, a little bag of chocolate eggs and an invitation to join us for the Easter Day service and meal.
As the months go on we’ll be looking at other ways of deepening the relationship with these people maybe with meals or other social events as well as inviting their children to come along to our Holiday Club at the beginning of July.
Philip and Vivienne Hatton have
pastored Brussels Baptist Church since 2000. Read more about them,
including their latest prayer letters, by clicking
here. For details
about serving overseas in Europe or somewhere else in the world, click
here.