June Volunteers of the Month: Ed & Sandy Snoke
Ed & Sandy provided their story of their time with The Sharing Place and SilverBox. Thank you both for your dedication to our mission!
We moved to Carmel, Indiana from the Chicago area in 2018 to be closer to our oldest granddaughter and our great-grandchildren who live in Fort Wayne. We are city lovers, and as much as loved living in a suburb of Chicago, we found that attending school functions for our great-grandchildren and then driving back to Chicago later that evening was too tiring as we aged. Ed was retired, and I worked from home, so we decided to move to Indianapolis to be close enough to our granddaughter and her family to attend school events and still easily make the drive back home that evening.
We made King of Glory Lutheran (KOG) church our new church home and settled into life in Indiana. King of Glory is one of three churches that serves elderly people who qualify to use a food pantry, but do not have transportation, or have physical limitations that make shopping at a food pantry difficult. Christ the Savior and Crown and Cross Lutheran churches also participate in this wonderful ministry that is managed by Lori Benages of Lutheran Child and Family Services. The silver Box ministry program was brought to the Indianapolis area from Arizona by Hans and Marion Loyda, members of King of Glory church.
As we settled into life in Indy and got more involved in activities at KOG, Hans sent out a request for callers for a food home delivery program called SilverBox. Hans and Marion had participated in this program when they lived in Arizona. They started the program in the Indianapolis area when they relocated here. Each month a group of callers take phone orders from the SilverBox participants for groceries. The callers work off an order sheet of items available at The Sharing Place Food Pantry. Each caller has his/her own group of “clients” that are called each month. This allows for a personal relationship to develop between the caller and clients. Since the majority of clients are older people living alone, this relationship becomes very important. On the third Saturday of the month, the church in charge of deliveries for that month (Christ the Savior, Cross and Crown, or King of Glory) provides drivers from their churches to deliver the boxes of food.
As Hans and Marion became busier in their personal lives with the arrival of grandchildren, I took on the task of generating the order forms for the Silverbox callers each month. Ed and I also started to help with the setup process for filling the boxes for the clients on the third weekend of each month. Toward the end of our first year participating in this wonderful ministry, we agreed to take over the management of the calling and delivery processes for the next year. We also took responsibility for providing toilet paper to the Silver Box clients each month.
As the next year drew to a close, I was diagnosed with a heart problem that made it difficult for me to do the amount of lifting and setting up needed to prepare Sharing Place for the delivery weekends and then reset up Sharing Place for its normal food pantry operations at the end of the delivery weekend. We reluctantly gave up managing the program but continue to help pack and deliver the food boxes when it is King of Glory’s turn.
Currently, we provide the toilet paper for all the clients in the months King of Glory is responsible for delivering the food boxes. (Christ the Savior and Cross and Crown provide the toilet paper for the months they are responsible for the food deliveries.) In the months when King of Glory is not responsible, we add three options to the list of available foods that are not normally available at the Sharing Place but are often requested by the SilverBox clients. We receive suggestions for these special food items from the callers, and then shop for them. These special items are included in the delivery boxes. When we receive a lot of requests for a particular item, we often have to place an order for an item after we have emptied the shelves in the area grocery stores, and then deliver it the week after the weekend delivery. This turns out to be a blessing for us, as it gives us the opportunity to visit with clients who have become special friends.
Our original intent in moving to the Indianapolis area was to stay for three years and then retire to the St. Louis area where two of our children and ten of our grandchildren live. The SilverBox program, Lori’s management, and the giving hearts of the three churches involved in this program have captured our hearts, and we are still here.
