Meals on Wheels has been in the news and on my heart this week. You may have seen the coverage of the July 15th groundbreaking for the new Meals on Wheels of Metro Tulsa Service Center on 51st Street near Yale, beside the YMCA building. I was asked to lead the invocation to start the ceremony. This new facility will include a state-of-the-art kitchen, food preparation and delivery system, as well as a community event center. Why is healthy food and caring contact for sick and homebound seniors so important? The cost of one year’s worth of meals for one person is less than one overnight stay in the hospital for that same person.
This past Monday, July 19, the coordinators from our Eastside Meals on Wheels churches met at our church to discuss a recommended plan for us to cautiously begin to restart delivery. The proposal is for volunteers from our churches to deliver seven frozen meals at a time to 20 residents in a single apartment building near 11th Street every Friday starting at 11 a.m. There is a phone app that volunteers would use to contact the recipient and update the office on the delivery and care that might be needed for these neighbors. I would like for you to prayerfully consider becoming a part of this ministry. We are having a meeting to learn the procedures for beginning delivery again, and to be trained on how to use the app on Friday, August 6 from 1:00-2:30 p.m. at the church.
The story of Tulsa’s Meals on Wheels organization goes back to 1970 and the kitchen at First Presbyterian Church downtown. The church provided a regular noonday luncheon for the business community. In the course of time someone suggested delivering some of those meals to homebound members. Someone else read about a program called “meals on wheels” in another state. Soon other churches were recruited, and the Tulsa program became an official Task Force of Tulsa Metropolitan Ministry, our local interfaith organization. In March 1978, I received a phone call from our own Waneta Reynolds suggesting that this might be something we should consider as a church. The next month we held an organizational meeting in our Fellowship Hall with five of our neighboring churches. Eastside Meals on Wheels began serving meals from our kitchen in August 1978.
Keep healthy. Pray mightily. Enjoy your life today. Thank you for serving. And let’s experience the love and power of God together.
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