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"I love people. Many homeless and vulnerable people feel invisible, but when they come here for our Wednesday and Sunday lunches it's like meeting up with old friends who care about them. It can be the highlight of their week. I don't know the figure for the total number of homeless in Barnet, but it's more than people see. Particularly at the start of the first lockdown, when everything shut down - the shops, the libraries, McDonalds, cafes - I was thinking, 'These guys have nowhere to go. Their normal places are all shut’. It was just too frightening to me. So I decided I was going to continue with our lunches, initially as a takeaway service, and we ran a food bank from here too. Homeless Action Barnet (HAB) also shut and they'd been a source of food for the guys. But the great thing was, they turned their building into a food bank. They were given money to provide temporary accommodation too, so they rehoused about 120 homeless guests in hotels and flats all across London. Of course, they had to be fed because they were getting no benefits. So a friend and I delivered food to them. We did that for about 3 or 4 months in maybe 2 or 3 hours a day. We'd collect all the food from HAB, load the car, drive to Wembley and hand it out. It was lovely to see some of the guys again, and it was interesting to see how their whole demeanor had changed because they had fixed accommodation. They were much more relaxed. They were also really happy to see us.
"I'm an unpaid pastor at St Barnabas Church and my faith in Jesus is my biggest strength. He looked after the weak and the helpless, and commanded us to love our neighbour as ourselves. Honestly, I feel honoured. Blessed. I get more out of this than I could ever put in. I think that's what our volunteers feel too. A lot of them are not church members, or of other faiths, or no faith, yet they still want to help alongside us. I did want children but I married when I was older, 38, and I had a very demanding job. Time passed, and then we found that we couldn't conceive, so that was that. Now I think our Community Lunch has become my family, my children."
"I love people. Many homeless and vulnerable people feel invisible, but when they come here for our Wednesday and Sunday lunches it's like meeting up with old friends who care about them. It can be the highlight of their week. I don't know the figure for the total number of homeless in Barnet, but it's more than people see. Particularly at the start of the first lockdown, when everything shut down - the shops, the libraries, McDonalds, cafes - I was thinking, 'These guys have nowhere to go. Their normal places are all shut’. It was just too frightening to me. So I decided I was going to continue with our lunches, initially as a takeaway service, and we ran a food bank from here too. Homeless Action Barnet (HAB) also shut and they'd been a source of food for the guys. But the great thing was, they turned their building into a food bank. They were given money to provide temporary accommodation too, so they rehoused about 120 homeless guests in hotels and flats all across London. Of course, they had to be fed because they were getting no benefits. So a friend and I delivered food to them. We did that for about 3 or 4 months in maybe 2 or 3 hours a day. We'd collect all the food from HAB, load the car, drive to Wembley and hand it out. It was lovely to see some of the guys again, and it was interesting to see how their whole demeanor had changed because they had fixed accommodation. They were much more relaxed. They were also really happy to see us.
"I'm an unpaid pastor at St Barnabas Church and my faith in Jesus is my biggest strength. He looked after the weak and the helpless, and commanded us to love our neighbour as ourselves. Honestly, I feel honoured. Blessed. I get more out of this than I could ever put in. I think that's what our volunteers feel too. A lot of them are not church members, or of other faiths, or no faith, yet they still want to help alongside us. I did want children but I married when I was older, 38, and I had a very demanding job. Time passed, and then we found that we couldn't conceive, so that was that. Now I think our Community Lunch has become my family, my children."
"I love people. Many homeless and vulnerable people feel invisible, but when they come here for our Wednesday and Sunday lunches it's like meeting up with old friends who care about them. It can be the highlight of their week. I don't know the figure for the total number of homeless in Barnet, but it's more than people see. Particularly at the start of the first lockdown, when everything shut down - the shops, the libraries, McDonalds, cafes - I was thinking, 'These guys have nowhere to go. Their normal places are all shut’. It was just too frightening to me. So I decided I was going to continue with our lunches, initially as a takeaway service, and we ran a food bank from here too. Homeless Action Barnet (HAB) also shut and they'd been a source of food for the guys. But the great thing was, they turned their building into a food bank. They were given money to provide temporary accommodation too, so they rehoused about 120 homeless guests in hotels and flats all across London. Of course, they had to be fed because they were getting no benefits. So a friend and I delivered food to them. We did that for about 3 or 4 months in maybe 2 or 3 hours a day. We'd collect all the food from HAB, load the car, drive to Wembley and hand it out. It was lovely to see some of the guys again, and it was interesting to see how their whole demeanor had changed because they had fixed accommodation. They were much more relaxed. They were also really happy to see us.