On Saturday, November 5th, Compassion Ministries conducted a Mobile Pantry in Philadelphia, TN. Thank you for all the wonderful volunteers that came out to serve the community. Great group of servants. We had a rough start and everyone pitched in! Together we served 150 families. Thank you Second Harvest Food Bank of East Tennessee, Christ Covenant, Tellico Community Church, Troy Reid and so many more.

On Saturday, 12 Sep 2020, we conducted a mobile food distribution, in partnership with United Health Care. Our location was in the parking lot of the elementary school. While there are still lots of folks being affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, we had many people tell us, “You don’t know how much this means. It’s been a rough year so far.” We served approximately 261 families, representing more than 1,015 family members, from 10:00 AM-2:45 PM: at the end working in a driving rainstorm. Compassion worked with the city of Philadelphia and the school staff to get the word out regarding the pantry and the times (assisted by an article in The Connection, a part of the Herald paper distributed across Loudon county). As we have done since the pandemic first started and to protect our customers (and volunteers) from possible contamination, they arrived in their car, we gained required information, and told them to open their trunk, and drive by the service areas where the volunteer staff loaded food into their trunks. Beside our regular volunteers from Cornerstone Church, we had great help from both Tellico Community Church and Grace & Glory Fellowship. We could not do these pantries without the continued assistance of these and many other volunteers. This time, besides our volunteers and customers, we were blessed by three private donations. The first was a much-appreciated milk donation from Davis Brother’s Dairy, represented by Ms. Rita Davis, and her daughter, Ms. Samantha Davis Craun. They milk over 800 cows 3-times daily and donated over 300 gallons of Mayfield milk. Mayfield is the primary purchaser of Davis’ dairy products. Then Sweetwater Valley Cheese provided huge amounts of locally produced cheese, and the most beautiful fresh produce was donated by local farmer, Mr. Frank Smith.

On Saturday, December 2nd, Compassion Ministries joined the school staff at Philadelphia Elementary School to conduct a Mobile Pantry to serve 182 families representing 761 people. Special thanks to the volunteers who made it possible as many churchs from the area, Grace and Glory, and school staff unified to make this a wonderful time of serving grateful people.