PANAMA CITY — After helping out during the Community Breakfast at First United Methodist Church, Emily Olsen felt called to do more.
“People would bring a couple of jackets and put them on the tables, and they would be gone in the first five minutes,” recalled Olsen, 21. “And I went to my sister, Brittany, and said, ‘what can we do?’ We prayed about it, and we talked about it.”
Volunteers had been feeding the hungry at the church’s Trinity Center for about a month before Olsen first helped out in July. Olsen and her sister, Brittany Garich, 17, decided to talk with Ted Wilson, who coordinates the Community Breakfast with John Whitley.
“Emily is just one those blessings you see from time to time. She has ideas of the types of things the people are in need of right now,” Wilson said.
Olsen and Garich started a Clothes Closet in the Trinity Center in October.
“I went to Ted and he pretty much gave us the stepping stone, and we pretty much flew off of it. We do it faithfully every other Saturday, the first and third of every month,” Olsen said. “It’s been a gradual process to get it out in the open. We have regulars who come to the breakfast and know about it that way.”
The Community Breakfast, which is every Saturday morning, starts with cereal and juice. The “cooking team” comes up with a menu, which has included French toast, scrambled eggs and grits, bacon, sausage and fresh fruit, such as bananas.
“Some of the funds for the breakfast are budgeted in and some are from individual contributions,” Wilson said. “The cooks get there around 6:30. It’s been cold out so we have let people in. But we open at 7:45 a.m. to serve coffee. We set it up more like a restaurant with everything on the table.
“Last week, we had about 50 volunteers. We need at least 25 for cooking and serving. Cooking is important, serving is important, but it’s also about sitting and talking and getting to know people better. That’s what this mission is all about. Providing people with food is responding to an emergency and then moving it to a more meaningful response. Our theology is ‘be doers of the word, and not hearers only’ (James 1:22); establish a relationship with the person.”
Some of the breakfast guests also visit the Clothes Closet, while others come for one or the other.
“Last week we had over 100 people, but we usually set up the tables for 70,” Wilson said.
Olsen sets up for the Clothes Closet on the Friday afternoon before the event. Donations may be dropped off between 4 and 5 p.m. Friday at the Trinity Center. Garich, an 11th-grade student at Rutherford High School, also tries to help Olsen out when she is not busy with school.
“It’s hard to take donations on Saturday morning when I am trying to answer questions and talk to the people,” Olsen admitted.
But with 80 to 100 guests, she also has realized the needs are greater than their supplies.
“We need sponsors to help. We need clothes, used backpacks. Most are homeless and they are carrying everything in plastic bags that are ripped. They need personal hygiene stuff, soap, toiletries, toothbrush, toothpaste, razors — they seem to like the $1 razors better — new underwear and new boxers for men, shaving cream, also walking shoes,” Olsen said. “When clothes have been sitting a while at the Clothes Closet, about two months, then I take some to the Rescue Mission, so I can put new ones on the rack.”
Recently, children’s items have been added to donations.
“My sister and I thought about it and prayed, and we gradually have started to take children’s clothes, too,” Olsen said.
While she is at the Clothes Closet, her grandmother, “mom,” watches her 14-month-old daughter, SummerLyn.
“My grandmother has been watching my child every Saturday for us to do this, and I am thankful for that,” Olsen said. “Some people are wearing clothes three weeks old that have never been washed. A baby came in one day and he was very dirty. And for some reason, I had my diaper bag with me in the car. I asked if I could give him a bath and we took him into the kitchen in the sink and let him play. And I had some neutral color clothes he could fit into that I gave to (his mother). We try to help anyone we can.”
Olsen’s daughter was the inspiration for getting her life back on track.
“I didn’t start going to the church faithfully until the past year,” said Olsen, who first attended with her paternal grandmother, Deborah Hardy.
Hardy works as a care provider, and one of her duties included taking a woman to FUMC on Sunday morning.
“Me and my daughter were baptized Oct. 13. I went first and then she went,” Olsen said. “I have been a Christian in the past but had gone off the deep end. I had a child out of wedlock. After my mom started going to church, I thought, ‘I have a baby and need to change my life.’ Living the Christian life as a full Christian is new to me.”
The Clothes Closet started in a hallway “crammed together,” but Olsen was overwhelmed with support from her Sunday School class.
“We moved it into my Sunday School class. We put all the clothes in the back so we can still have class,” Olsen said. “This past Saturday, we had the Sunday School class come help me out for Valentine’s Day. It shocked my heart. Usually, it’s just me and my sister and two or three others.”
Olsen is a member of the Fusion Sunday School class, led by Alex and Laura King, which uses different Bible study guides to go along with their lessons.
“Right now we are on the Purpose Driven Life, and our Sunday School class was involved as a project related to our Purpose Driven Life study. And that’s how I found out Emily had started the Clothes Closet in conjunction with the breakfast,” said Jana Wibberley, who brought a few young helpers with her during the Feb. 15 Clothes Closet.
Her daughter, Allie Wibberley, 7, and friends William Ascherl, 7, and Fulton Ascherl, 9, drew on paper bags that were used to put the toiletries in for the guests.
“They really liked them. One man said, ‘It made me feel like I was back at home with my kids.’ I would like to give a big thank you to everyone that has helped us,” Olsen said. “This is our first rodeo. It’s eye opening. I never realized what these people go through until I sat down and talked to them. It takes a lot of faith to sit down and share personal things about your life. They ask a lot of questions, and they share a lot with you — feel like they are at home with family.
“I said, ‘it’s hard’ to my sister, and she said, ‘no, it’s not, you just have to push yourself.’ I don’t even have to set my alarm clock Saturday mornings anymore.”