Story By John Mann

There was a hot breakfast along with beans and rice to take home Saturday at The Epiphany Episcopal Church in Guntersville, just one of the food giveaways they do throughout the year.

“Each of the bags contains a pound of dry rice and a pound of dry beans and today we also have pears,” Epiphany Outreach Ministry Chair Jennie McBride said. “People can come and get as many bags as they need. We also have a free community breakfast and we encourage people who come for beans and rice to head inside and have a hot breakfast. I like to think we have the best sausage biscuit in town and we usually have muffins and fruit, coffee and orange juice. It’s a great way for us to meet our neighbors.”

The church offers the beans and rice monthly on the second Saturday of the month, funded through the church and donations from individuals and organizations like the Guntersville Lion’s Club, Ladies Civitan Club and Scout Troop 4173.

The beans and rice is just one small part of the church’s efforts to provide food for citizens of Guntersville and Marshall county. On their campus is an always open food pantry where people can take non-perishable food items whenever they need, which is checked and stocked once a day by a volunteer.

“It’s a twenty-four seven pantry that gets stocked once a day by our volunteers,” McBride said. “We have things like macaroni and cheese and peanut butter and it if happens to be empty, it only gets stocked once a day after all, we also have bags of groceries in the office. We have a volunteer every day for the pantry, nine people on the outreach board meeting once a month and the community helps a lot and are always putting food in the pantry, someone will have gone to Costco or Wal-Mart and picked up some extra canned food to put in there, it’s always exciting when it’s your day to stock and you see new boxes of pasta someone left.”

Epiphany works multiple food drives throughout the year and also works to provide assistance with things like bills and rent in emergencies. In order to keep their food bank stocked they are always open to donations of food but can only accept non-perishable items since the pantry is not refrigerated.

Some of the items that they look for are dry pasta, canned vegetables, canned proteins like chicken or tuna and they say they are always in need of dried or canned milk. Donations can be dropped off at the office or put directly into the pantry.

Epiphany is located at 1101 Sunset Drive, across the street from Civitan Park in Guntersville, and has their main worship service at 1030 on Sunday.

The next beans and rice giveaway will be on Sept. 12 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.