Pictured are Community Christian Services board members (from left) Darrell Alford, Tommy Spurlock, Jody Hooper, Lauren Bonner, and Mark Lawrence.
November 12, 2024 - The Scottish Rite presented a donation to Community Christian Services during a program held at Tenaha Masonic Lodge #737 on October 29, 2024.
Scottish Rite member Mike Waldrop explained that the Waco Scottish Rite Charitable Foundation provides what are called community grants, which are for organizations, and those organizations can be lodges, Scottish Rite clubs, or a variety of different organizations to which the Scottish Rite will match up to $2,500 if that group does something for the community.
Mike Waldrop
Waldrop said the Waco Scottish Rite Valley has been providing Thanksgiving and Christmas meals to Meals on Wheels in Waco for around 38 years and they put together around 550 meals in an hour and a half.
Waldrop continued, “Last year, the chairman of this committee here of our Waco Scottish Rite Charitable Foundation said, ‘we give away about $7,500 a year,’ and he said, ‘I think we need to start doing this for other parts of our valley.’”
Waldrop described the “valley” as covering from the Louisiana border all the way to the other side of San Angelo in West Texas and many areas north and south in between.
“What he decided that we needed to do was he was going to either ask East Texas, Central Texas and West Texas, either Meals on Wheels chapters or food banks, that we would help those that submit a recommendation or submit an application to become one of the recipients of this $2,500 for West Texas, East Texas, and Central Texas,” said Waldrop.
Receiving the check on behalf of Community Christian Services was Jody Hooper, who is a member of the board, and he was also accompanied by the rest of the board to received the donation.
“I would like to say thank you to Lauren [Bonner] who did the tedious work of the application for Mr. Randy [Bonner], for all of you that help out each and every week. One thing I can I can speak for as one of the board members is that we're very scrupulous in how we spend money, and every penny goes to procure food for those that we give away to. We operate on a real small budget, but we've got a really big God, and he's never let us down. He's not going to. Every time we look around, there's more money and there's more food, and we just get to give it away. So we're very thankful for that.
“Thanks to all of you for, again, trusting us with this, and I invite you at any time to come to our pantry and watch what we do and see the people that it helps. There's people all over, Shelby County that come usually over 200 families every month that come on our pantry day. So if you think there's not hungry folks in Shelby County, just come to the pantry on November the 20th, I think is the third Wednesday, and you'll see them lined up all the way around the church over to Brookshire's and they're not sitting in line for two hours because they don't have anything else to do. They're sitting there 'cause they're hungry and we get the privilege to feed them and you guys help us do that, thank you so much.”
